Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire

Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire

Author: Duncan Hardy

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-08-29

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0192562177

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What was the Holy Roman Empire in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries? At the turning point between the medieval and early modern periods, this vast Central European polity was the continent's most politically fragmented. The imperial monarchs were often weak and distant, while a diverse array of regional actors played an autonomous role in political life. The Empire's obvious differences compared with more centralized European kingdoms have stimulated negative historical judgements and fraught debates, which have found expression in recent decades in the concepts of fractured 'territorial states' and a disjointed 'imperial constitution'. Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire challenges these interpretations through a wide-ranging case study of Upper Germany — the southern regions of modern-day Germany plus Alsace, Switzerland, and western Austria — between 1346 and 1521. By examining the interactions of princes, prelates, nobles, and towns comparatively, Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire demonstrates that a range of actors and authorities shared the same toolkit of technologies, rituals, judicial systems, and concepts and configurations of government. Crucially, Upper German elites all participated in leagues, alliances, and other treaty-based associations. As frameworks for collective activity, associations were a vital means of enabling and regulating warfare, justice and arbitration, and even lordship and administration. On the basis of this evidence, Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire offers a new and more coherent depiction of the Holy Roman Empire as a sprawling community of interdependent elites who interacted within the framework of a shared political culture.


Book Synopsis Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire by : Duncan Hardy

Download or read book Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire written by Duncan Hardy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-29 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What was the Holy Roman Empire in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries? At the turning point between the medieval and early modern periods, this vast Central European polity was the continent's most politically fragmented. The imperial monarchs were often weak and distant, while a diverse array of regional actors played an autonomous role in political life. The Empire's obvious differences compared with more centralized European kingdoms have stimulated negative historical judgements and fraught debates, which have found expression in recent decades in the concepts of fractured 'territorial states' and a disjointed 'imperial constitution'. Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire challenges these interpretations through a wide-ranging case study of Upper Germany — the southern regions of modern-day Germany plus Alsace, Switzerland, and western Austria — between 1346 and 1521. By examining the interactions of princes, prelates, nobles, and towns comparatively, Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire demonstrates that a range of actors and authorities shared the same toolkit of technologies, rituals, judicial systems, and concepts and configurations of government. Crucially, Upper German elites all participated in leagues, alliances, and other treaty-based associations. As frameworks for collective activity, associations were a vital means of enabling and regulating warfare, justice and arbitration, and even lordship and administration. On the basis of this evidence, Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire offers a new and more coherent depiction of the Holy Roman Empire as a sprawling community of interdependent elites who interacted within the framework of a shared political culture.

Trade in the Ancient Mediterranean

Trade in the Ancient Mediterranean

Author: Taco Terpstra

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2019-04-09

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0691172080

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How ancient Mediterranean trade thrived through state institutions From around 700 BCE until the first centuries CE, the Mediterranean enjoyed steady economic growth through trade, reaching a level not to be regained until the early modern era. This process of growth coincided with a process of state formation, culminating in the largest state the ancient Mediterranean would ever know, the Roman Empire. Subsequent economic decline coincided with state disintegration. How are the two processes related? In Trade in the Ancient Mediterranean, Taco Terpstra investigates how the organizational structure of trade benefited from state institutions. Although enforcement typically depended on private actors, traders could utilize a public infrastructure, which included not only courts and legal frameworks but also socially cohesive ideologies. Terpstra details how business practices emerged that were based on private order, yet took advantage of public institutions. Focusing on the activity of both private and public economic actors—from Greek city councilors and Ptolemaic officials to long-distance traders and Roman magistrates and financiers—Terpstra illuminates the complex relationship between economic development and state structures in the ancient Mediterranean.


Book Synopsis Trade in the Ancient Mediterranean by : Taco Terpstra

Download or read book Trade in the Ancient Mediterranean written by Taco Terpstra and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-09 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How ancient Mediterranean trade thrived through state institutions From around 700 BCE until the first centuries CE, the Mediterranean enjoyed steady economic growth through trade, reaching a level not to be regained until the early modern era. This process of growth coincided with a process of state formation, culminating in the largest state the ancient Mediterranean would ever know, the Roman Empire. Subsequent economic decline coincided with state disintegration. How are the two processes related? In Trade in the Ancient Mediterranean, Taco Terpstra investigates how the organizational structure of trade benefited from state institutions. Although enforcement typically depended on private actors, traders could utilize a public infrastructure, which included not only courts and legal frameworks but also socially cohesive ideologies. Terpstra details how business practices emerged that were based on private order, yet took advantage of public institutions. Focusing on the activity of both private and public economic actors—from Greek city councilors and Ptolemaic officials to long-distance traders and Roman magistrates and financiers—Terpstra illuminates the complex relationship between economic development and state structures in the ancient Mediterranean.

The Devil's Art

The Devil's Art

Author: Jason P. Coy

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2020-06-04

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 0813944082

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In early modern Germany, soothsayers known as wise women and men roamed the countryside. Fixtures of village life, they identified thieves and witches, read palms, and cast horoscopes. German villagers regularly consulted these fortune-tellers and practiced divination in their everyday lives. Jason Phillip Coy brings their enchanted world to life by examining theological discourse alongside archival records of prosecution for popular divination in Thuringia, a diverse region in central Germany divided into a patchwork of princely territories, imperial cities, small towns, and rural villages. Popular divination faced centuries of elite condemnation, as the Lutheran clergy attempted to suppress these practices in the wake of the Reformation and learned elites sought to eradicate them during the Enlightenment. As Coy finds, both of these reform efforts failed, and divination remained a prominent feature of rural life in Thuringia until well into the nineteenth century. The century after 1550 saw intense confessional conflict accompanied by widespread censure and disciplinary measures, with prominent Lutheran theologians and demonologists preaching that divination was a demonic threat to the Christian community and that soothsayers deserved the death penalty. Rulers, however, refused to treat divination as a capital crime, and the populace continued to embrace it alongside official Christianity in troubled times. The Devil’s Art highlights the limits of Reformation-era disciplinary efforts and demonstrates the extent to which reformers’ efforts to inculcate new cultural norms relied upon the support of secular authorities and the acquiescence of parishioners. Negotiation, accommodation, and local resistance blunted official reform efforts and ensured that occult activities persisted and even flourished in Germany into the modern era, surviving Reformation-era preaching and Enlightenment-era ridicule alike. Studies in Early Modern German History


Book Synopsis The Devil's Art by : Jason P. Coy

Download or read book The Devil's Art written by Jason P. Coy and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2020-06-04 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In early modern Germany, soothsayers known as wise women and men roamed the countryside. Fixtures of village life, they identified thieves and witches, read palms, and cast horoscopes. German villagers regularly consulted these fortune-tellers and practiced divination in their everyday lives. Jason Phillip Coy brings their enchanted world to life by examining theological discourse alongside archival records of prosecution for popular divination in Thuringia, a diverse region in central Germany divided into a patchwork of princely territories, imperial cities, small towns, and rural villages. Popular divination faced centuries of elite condemnation, as the Lutheran clergy attempted to suppress these practices in the wake of the Reformation and learned elites sought to eradicate them during the Enlightenment. As Coy finds, both of these reform efforts failed, and divination remained a prominent feature of rural life in Thuringia until well into the nineteenth century. The century after 1550 saw intense confessional conflict accompanied by widespread censure and disciplinary measures, with prominent Lutheran theologians and demonologists preaching that divination was a demonic threat to the Christian community and that soothsayers deserved the death penalty. Rulers, however, refused to treat divination as a capital crime, and the populace continued to embrace it alongside official Christianity in troubled times. The Devil’s Art highlights the limits of Reformation-era disciplinary efforts and demonstrates the extent to which reformers’ efforts to inculcate new cultural norms relied upon the support of secular authorities and the acquiescence of parishioners. Negotiation, accommodation, and local resistance blunted official reform efforts and ensured that occult activities persisted and even flourished in Germany into the modern era, surviving Reformation-era preaching and Enlightenment-era ridicule alike. Studies in Early Modern German History

Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire

Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire

Author: Duncan Hardy

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-08-21

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0192562169

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What was the Holy Roman Empire in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries? At the turning point between the medieval and early modern periods, this vast Central European polity was the continent's most politically fragmented. The imperial monarchs were often weak and distant, while a diverse array of regional actors played an autonomous role in political life. The Empire's obvious differences compared with more centralized European kingdoms have stimulated negative historical judgements and fraught debates, which have found expression in recent decades in the concepts of fractured 'territorial states' and a disjointed 'imperial constitution'. Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire challenges these interpretations through a wide-ranging case study of Upper Germany — the southern regions of modern-day Germany plus Alsace, Switzerland, and western Austria — between 1346 and 1521. By examining the interactions of princes, prelates, nobles, and towns comparatively, Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire demonstrates that a range of actors and authorities shared the same toolkit of technologies, rituals, judicial systems, and concepts and configurations of government. Crucially, Upper German elites all participated in leagues, alliances, and other treaty-based associations. As frameworks for collective activity, associations were a vital means of enabling and regulating warfare, justice and arbitration, and even lordship and administration. On the basis of this evidence, Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire offers a new and more coherent depiction of the Holy Roman Empire as a sprawling community of interdependent elites who interacted within the framework of a shared political culture.


Book Synopsis Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire by : Duncan Hardy

Download or read book Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire written by Duncan Hardy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-21 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What was the Holy Roman Empire in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries? At the turning point between the medieval and early modern periods, this vast Central European polity was the continent's most politically fragmented. The imperial monarchs were often weak and distant, while a diverse array of regional actors played an autonomous role in political life. The Empire's obvious differences compared with more centralized European kingdoms have stimulated negative historical judgements and fraught debates, which have found expression in recent decades in the concepts of fractured 'territorial states' and a disjointed 'imperial constitution'. Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire challenges these interpretations through a wide-ranging case study of Upper Germany — the southern regions of modern-day Germany plus Alsace, Switzerland, and western Austria — between 1346 and 1521. By examining the interactions of princes, prelates, nobles, and towns comparatively, Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire demonstrates that a range of actors and authorities shared the same toolkit of technologies, rituals, judicial systems, and concepts and configurations of government. Crucially, Upper German elites all participated in leagues, alliances, and other treaty-based associations. As frameworks for collective activity, associations were a vital means of enabling and regulating warfare, justice and arbitration, and even lordship and administration. On the basis of this evidence, Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire offers a new and more coherent depiction of the Holy Roman Empire as a sprawling community of interdependent elites who interacted within the framework of a shared political culture.

The Holy Roman Empire

The Holy Roman Empire

Author: Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2021-05-11

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 0691217319

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A new interpretation of the Holy Roman Empire that reveals why it was not a failed state as many historians believe The Holy Roman Empire emerged in the Middle Ages as a loosely integrated union of German states and city-states under the supreme rule of an emperor. Around 1500, it took on a more formal structure with the establishment of powerful institutions--such as the Reichstag and Imperial Chamber Court--that would endure more or less intact until the empire's dissolution by Napoleon in 1806. Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger provides a concise history of the Holy Roman Empire, presenting an entirely new interpretation of the empire's political culture and remarkably durable institutions. Rather than comparing the empire to modern states or associations like the European Union, Stollberg-Rilinger shows how it was a political body unlike any other--it had no standing army, no clear boundaries, no general taxation or bureaucracy. She describes a heterogeneous association based on tradition and shared purpose, bound together by personal loyalty and reciprocity, and constantly reenacted by solemn rituals. In a narrative spanning three turbulent centuries, she takes readers from the reform era at the dawn of the sixteenth century to the crisis of the Reformation, from the consolidation of the Peace of Augsburg to the destructive fury of the Thirty Years' War, from the conflict between Austria and Prussia to the empire's downfall in the age of the French Revolution. Authoritative and accessible, The Holy Roman Empire is an incomparable introduction to this momentous period in the history of Europe.


Book Synopsis The Holy Roman Empire by : Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger

Download or read book The Holy Roman Empire written by Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new interpretation of the Holy Roman Empire that reveals why it was not a failed state as many historians believe The Holy Roman Empire emerged in the Middle Ages as a loosely integrated union of German states and city-states under the supreme rule of an emperor. Around 1500, it took on a more formal structure with the establishment of powerful institutions--such as the Reichstag and Imperial Chamber Court--that would endure more or less intact until the empire's dissolution by Napoleon in 1806. Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger provides a concise history of the Holy Roman Empire, presenting an entirely new interpretation of the empire's political culture and remarkably durable institutions. Rather than comparing the empire to modern states or associations like the European Union, Stollberg-Rilinger shows how it was a political body unlike any other--it had no standing army, no clear boundaries, no general taxation or bureaucracy. She describes a heterogeneous association based on tradition and shared purpose, bound together by personal loyalty and reciprocity, and constantly reenacted by solemn rituals. In a narrative spanning three turbulent centuries, she takes readers from the reform era at the dawn of the sixteenth century to the crisis of the Reformation, from the consolidation of the Peace of Augsburg to the destructive fury of the Thirty Years' War, from the conflict between Austria and Prussia to the empire's downfall in the age of the French Revolution. Authoritative and accessible, The Holy Roman Empire is an incomparable introduction to this momentous period in the history of Europe.

Imperial Villages

Imperial Villages

Author: Beat Kümin

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-05-07

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 9004396608

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In this first book-length study of imperial villages, Beat Kümin provides unprecedented insights into the micro-political cultures of rural communities and popular desires for local autonomy in the pre-modern German lands.


Book Synopsis Imperial Villages by : Beat Kümin

Download or read book Imperial Villages written by Beat Kümin and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this first book-length study of imperial villages, Beat Kümin provides unprecedented insights into the micro-political cultures of rural communities and popular desires for local autonomy in the pre-modern German lands.

The Medieval Empire in Central Europe

The Medieval Empire in Central Europe

Author: Herbert Schutz

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 9781443819664

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This book offers a concise yet detailed political history of medieval Central Europe as it traces the history of the Medieval Empire from its inception as a kingdom during the early 10th century, to its formation as Roman Empire, its support of the papacy, its struggle with the papacy for supremacy, the shift of its centre of gravity to Italy and its demise into particularist parts by the middle of the 13th century. It surveys the three dynasties which ruled the Post-Carolingian Empire and follows the political emergence of a disjointed region through its crystallization into an independent kingdom to become by the year 1000 the strongest military and political power in Europe, ultimately called upon to stabilize the political unrest in Italy. As Roman emperors the kings ordered the affairs of the city of Rome and bolstered the spiritual and political position of the popes until several competent popes turned the papal dependency into its primacy and enforced the subordination of the secular authorities. The Crusades helped to play great military and political power into papal hands, so that the secular authority declined, as the monarchy lost interest in Germany and became focused on Italy and especially on Sicily.


Book Synopsis The Medieval Empire in Central Europe by : Herbert Schutz

Download or read book The Medieval Empire in Central Europe written by Herbert Schutz and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a concise yet detailed political history of medieval Central Europe as it traces the history of the Medieval Empire from its inception as a kingdom during the early 10th century, to its formation as Roman Empire, its support of the papacy, its struggle with the papacy for supremacy, the shift of its centre of gravity to Italy and its demise into particularist parts by the middle of the 13th century. It surveys the three dynasties which ruled the Post-Carolingian Empire and follows the political emergence of a disjointed region through its crystallization into an independent kingdom to become by the year 1000 the strongest military and political power in Europe, ultimately called upon to stabilize the political unrest in Italy. As Roman emperors the kings ordered the affairs of the city of Rome and bolstered the spiritual and political position of the popes until several competent popes turned the papal dependency into its primacy and enforced the subordination of the secular authorities. The Crusades helped to play great military and political power into papal hands, so that the secular authority declined, as the monarchy lost interest in Germany and became focused on Italy and especially on Sicily.

Heart of Europe

Heart of Europe

Author: Peter H. Wilson

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2016-04-04

Total Pages: 1025

ISBN-13: 0674058097

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An Economist and Sunday Times Best Book of the Year “Deserves to be hailed as a magnum opus.” —Tom Holland, The Telegraph “Ambitious...seeks to rehabilitate the Holy Roman Empire’s reputation by re-examining its place within the larger sweep of European history...Succeeds splendidly in rescuing the empire from its critics.” —Wall Street Journal Massive, ancient, and powerful, the Holy Roman Empire formed the heart of Europe from its founding by Charlemagne to its destruction by Napoleon a millennium later. An engine for inventions and ideas, with no fixed capital and no common language or culture, it derived its legitimacy from the ideal of a unified Christian civilization—though this did not prevent emperors from clashing with the pope for supremacy. In this strikingly ambitious book, Peter H. Wilson explains how the Holy Roman Empire worked, why it was so important, and how it changed over the course of its existence. The result is a tour de force that raises countless questions about the nature of political and military power and the legacy of its offspring, from Nazi Germany to the European Union. “Engrossing...Wilson is to be congratulated on writing the only English-language work that deals with the empire from start to finish...A book that is relevant to our own times.” —Brendan Simms, The Times “The culmination of a lifetime of research and thought...an astonishing scholarly achievement.” —The Spectator “Remarkable...Wilson has set himself a staggering task, but it is one at which he succeeds heroically.” —Times Literary Supplement


Book Synopsis Heart of Europe by : Peter H. Wilson

Download or read book Heart of Europe written by Peter H. Wilson and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-04 with total page 1025 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Economist and Sunday Times Best Book of the Year “Deserves to be hailed as a magnum opus.” —Tom Holland, The Telegraph “Ambitious...seeks to rehabilitate the Holy Roman Empire’s reputation by re-examining its place within the larger sweep of European history...Succeeds splendidly in rescuing the empire from its critics.” —Wall Street Journal Massive, ancient, and powerful, the Holy Roman Empire formed the heart of Europe from its founding by Charlemagne to its destruction by Napoleon a millennium later. An engine for inventions and ideas, with no fixed capital and no common language or culture, it derived its legitimacy from the ideal of a unified Christian civilization—though this did not prevent emperors from clashing with the pope for supremacy. In this strikingly ambitious book, Peter H. Wilson explains how the Holy Roman Empire worked, why it was so important, and how it changed over the course of its existence. The result is a tour de force that raises countless questions about the nature of political and military power and the legacy of its offspring, from Nazi Germany to the European Union. “Engrossing...Wilson is to be congratulated on writing the only English-language work that deals with the empire from start to finish...A book that is relevant to our own times.” —Brendan Simms, The Times “The culmination of a lifetime of research and thought...an astonishing scholarly achievement.” —The Spectator “Remarkable...Wilson has set himself a staggering task, but it is one at which he succeeds heroically.” —Times Literary Supplement

St. Anne in Renaissance Music

St. Anne in Renaissance Music

Author: Michael Alan Anderson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-05-12

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 1107056241

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Michael Alan Anderson explores the political implications of music devoted to St Anne in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.


Book Synopsis St. Anne in Renaissance Music by : Michael Alan Anderson

Download or read book St. Anne in Renaissance Music written by Michael Alan Anderson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-12 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Alan Anderson explores the political implications of music devoted to St Anne in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

Empire of Magic

Empire of Magic

Author: Geraldine Heng

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 550

ISBN-13: 9780231125260

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Empire of Magic offers a genesis and genealogy for medieval romance and the King Arthur legend through the history of Europe's encounters with the East in crusades, travel, missionizing, and empire formation. It also produces definitions of "race" and "nation" for the medieval period and posits that the Middle Ages and medieval fantasies of race and religion have recently returned. Drawing on feminist and gender theory, as well as cultural analyses of race, class, and colonialism, this provocative book revises our understanding of the beginnings of the nine hundred-year-old cultural genre we call romance, as well as the King Arthur legend. Geraldine Heng argues that romance arose in the twelfth century as a cultural response to the trauma and horror of taboo acts--in particular the cannibalism committed by crusaders on the bodies of Muslim enemies in Syria during the First Crusade. From such encounters with the East, Heng suggests, sprang the fantastical episodes featuring King Arthur in Geoffrey of Monmouth's chronicle The History of the Kings of England, a work where history and fantasy collide and merge, each into the other, inventing crucial new examples and models for romances to come. After locating the rise of romance and Arthurian legend in the contact zones of East and West, Heng demonstrates the adaptability of romance and its key role in the genesis of an English national identity. Discussing Jews, women, children, and sexuality in works like the romance of Richard Lionheart, stories of the saintly Constance, Arthurian chivralic literature, the legend of Prester John, and travel narratives, Heng shows how fantasy enabled audiences to work through issues of communal identity, race, color, class and alternative sexualities in socially sanctioned and safe modes of cultural discussion in which pleasure, not anxiety, was paramount. Romance also engaged with the threat of modernity in the late medieval period, as economic, social, and technological transformations occurred and awareness grew of a vastly enlarged world beyond Europe, one encompassing India, China, and Africa. Finally, Heng posits, romance locates England and Europe within an empire of magic and knowledge that surveys the world and makes it intelligible--usable--for the future. Empire of Magic is expansive in scope, spanning the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, and detailed in coverage, examining various types of romance--historical, national, popular, chivalric, family, and travel romances, among others--to see how cultural fantasy responds to changing crises, pressures, and demands in a number of different ways. Boldly controversial, theoretically sophisticated, and historically rooted, Empire of Magic is a dramatic restaging of the role romance played in the culture of a period and world in ways that suggest how cultural fantasy still functions for us today.


Book Synopsis Empire of Magic by : Geraldine Heng

Download or read book Empire of Magic written by Geraldine Heng and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Empire of Magic offers a genesis and genealogy for medieval romance and the King Arthur legend through the history of Europe's encounters with the East in crusades, travel, missionizing, and empire formation. It also produces definitions of "race" and "nation" for the medieval period and posits that the Middle Ages and medieval fantasies of race and religion have recently returned. Drawing on feminist and gender theory, as well as cultural analyses of race, class, and colonialism, this provocative book revises our understanding of the beginnings of the nine hundred-year-old cultural genre we call romance, as well as the King Arthur legend. Geraldine Heng argues that romance arose in the twelfth century as a cultural response to the trauma and horror of taboo acts--in particular the cannibalism committed by crusaders on the bodies of Muslim enemies in Syria during the First Crusade. From such encounters with the East, Heng suggests, sprang the fantastical episodes featuring King Arthur in Geoffrey of Monmouth's chronicle The History of the Kings of England, a work where history and fantasy collide and merge, each into the other, inventing crucial new examples and models for romances to come. After locating the rise of romance and Arthurian legend in the contact zones of East and West, Heng demonstrates the adaptability of romance and its key role in the genesis of an English national identity. Discussing Jews, women, children, and sexuality in works like the romance of Richard Lionheart, stories of the saintly Constance, Arthurian chivralic literature, the legend of Prester John, and travel narratives, Heng shows how fantasy enabled audiences to work through issues of communal identity, race, color, class and alternative sexualities in socially sanctioned and safe modes of cultural discussion in which pleasure, not anxiety, was paramount. Romance also engaged with the threat of modernity in the late medieval period, as economic, social, and technological transformations occurred and awareness grew of a vastly enlarged world beyond Europe, one encompassing India, China, and Africa. Finally, Heng posits, romance locates England and Europe within an empire of magic and knowledge that surveys the world and makes it intelligible--usable--for the future. Empire of Magic is expansive in scope, spanning the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, and detailed in coverage, examining various types of romance--historical, national, popular, chivalric, family, and travel romances, among others--to see how cultural fantasy responds to changing crises, pressures, and demands in a number of different ways. Boldly controversial, theoretically sophisticated, and historically rooted, Empire of Magic is a dramatic restaging of the role romance played in the culture of a period and world in ways that suggest how cultural fantasy still functions for us today.