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Browsing by Subject "Middle Ages"

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    The Norman Kingdom of Africa and the Medieval Mediterranean
    (2018-03) King, Matt
    During the twelfth century, the Mediterranean Sea contained a complex array of economic, political, military, religious, and social networks. My dissertation explores the relationship of two dynasties that were at the center of these networks: the Norman lords of Sicily and the Zirid emirs of Ifriqiya (roughly modern-day Tunisia, eastern Algeria, and western Libya) in the years leading up to the Norman conquest of Zirid lands and the formation of the Norman Kingdom of Africa (1148-1160). Previous scholarship, particularly work written by French colonial historians, has emphasized the triumph of the Christian Normans over their Muslim foes and disregarded the agency of the Zirids. I show that the medieval sources tell a different story. Latin and Arabic texts attest to the importance of the Zirid emirs of Ifriqiya to larger networks in the Mediterranean. In 1123, for example, the Zirid emir al-Hasan ibn ‘Ali united a group of Arab and Berber (indigenous North African) tribes to defeat the navy of the Norman lord Roger II. Several years later, al-Hasan ibn ‘Ali formed an alliance with the Almoravids of Morocco to raid cities along the coast of Sicily. Zirid power in Ifriqiya only waned in the wake of a decade-long drought, which allowed the opportunistic Normans to seize Zirid lands. The Normans under Roger II and his son William I ruled the coastline of Ifriqiya for twelve years, during which time they made small changes to its society that favored Christians over Muslims while occasionally proclaiming themselves “King of Africa.” Arabic chroniclers writing about the Norman conquest of Ifriqiya did not acknowledge the legitimacy of the Normans’ kingship in Ifriqiya and instead presented the Normans as one prong of a Mediterranean-wide “Frankish” assault upon the lands of Islam, one that warranted jihad on all fronts.
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    Power Broker or Broken Power: Violence and the Intersection of Race, Gender, and Social Standing in Medieval French and Iberian Literature
    (2023-11) Obernolte, Benjamin
    This project takes up the question of how an individual's social situation can impact their interpersonal relationships by looking at the ways that race, gender, and social standing impact violent interactions between characters in two genres of medieval poetry, the fabliaux and the pastorela, written during the Middle Ages in France and Iberia. The theories of intersectionality, gender, genre, and the monster facilitate this study as they help the reader better understand the social dynamics within these texts. Chapter one studies Marcabru's 12th-century poem "L'autrer jost' una sebissa" and the role that race, gender, and social standing play in the interaction between the two main characters. Chapter two foregrounds femininity and looks at the lines between de-feminization and de-humanization in the fabliau "La vieille truande," and Juan Ruiz's Libro de buen amor. Chapter three turns toward the male characters and looks at how space impacts power in the Libro de buen amor and the fabliaux "Le prestre crucifie." This project's goal is to help the reader better understand the power dynamics in their 21st-century life through the study of medieval texts; therefore, the project closes with a discussion on ways that the author has incorporated this work into his work as a teacher in secondary education.