Making the East Latin: The Latin Literature of the Levant in the Era of the Crusades (Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Humanities) - Hardcover

Yolles, Julian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0884024881 ISBN 13: 9780884024880

Publisher: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2022

Synopsis

“This new day, new joy, the consummation of toil and devotion with ever new and eternal rejoicing, required new words, new songs from all!”

So wrote Raymond of Aguilers, a Provençal priest, when an army of nobles, knights, footmen, and priests from across Europe managed to conquer Jerusalem after three years of traveling and fighting. And there certainly were new words and new songs. These settlers produced a hybrid Latin literature―a “Levantine Latinity”―distinct from that in Europe, and their new literary tradition both drew on and resisted Levantine Muslim, Christian, and Jewish cultures in the newly occupied territories.

This volume analyzes the literary and rhetorical techniques of well-known authors such as William of Tyre, literary compositions of communities of canons in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and individual scholars in the Principality of Antioch. These varied sources reveal the coherent and increasingly sophisticated ways in which Crusader settlers responded to their new environment while maintaining ties with their homelands in western Europe. In a short time, Levantine Latinity emerged to form an indispensable part of the literary history of both the Near East and Europe.

About this title

About the Author

Julian Yolles is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Medieval Literature at the University of Southern Denmark.

Edition details

• Publisher: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0884024881
• ISBN 13: 9780884024880
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 312