Strangers at the gate! multidisciplinary explorations of communities, borders, and othering in in Medieval Western Europe

"This volume showcases a range of different approaches to strangers and strangeness across medieval western Europe. It focuses on how communities responded to the arrival of strangers and to different ways in which individuals and groups were constructed as estranged. Further, it reflects on different forms of border-crossing, from lived experience to literary imagination and from specific journeys in precise contexts to the conceptualisation of the shift from life to death. In the range of its contributions – applying linguistic, historical, archaeological, architectural, archival, literary, and theological analyses – it seeks to bring together disciplines and geographical areas of study that are too often strangers to one another in medieval studies.Contributors are Sherif Abdelkarim, Anna Adamska, Adrien Carbonnet, Wim De Clercq, Florian Dolberg, Joshua S. Easterling, Susan Irvine, Marco Mostert, Richard North, James Plumtree, Euan McCartney Robson, Beatrice Saletti, Simon C. Thomson and Gerben Verbrugghe."in Brill Contents 5 Acknowledgements 7 Figures and Tables 9 Notes on Contributors 10 Introduction: Fearing, Facing, and Being a Stranger 15 Chapter 1 Studying Communication in the Margins of Medieval Society 37 Chapter 2 HITting on Migration in the Murky Middle Ages: Advocating an Interdisciplinary Approach 55 Chapter 3 The Language of the Mute Strangers: The Ambivalent Position of the German Language in the Late Medieval Polish Kingdom 77 Chapter 4 How Foreigners Entered Italian Cities in the Fifteenth Century: The Case of Bologna 92 Chapter 5 Little Flanders Beyond Wales: The Historical Context of Flemish Settlement Landscapes in South Pembrokeshire 112 Chapter 6 Repopulating the City with Strangers: The Forced Colonization of Arras by the King of France Louis XI (1479–1484) 127 Chapter 7 Strangers in the Cathedral: Place, Landscape and Nostalgia in Symeon of Durham’s Libellus de Exordio 142 Chapter 8 Resident Stranger: Sæmundr in the Ashkenaz 160 Chapter 9 The Perils of Medieval Bridges: Gregory, Grendel and Gawain 180 Chapter 10 Strange Confessions: Salvation and Prayers for the Dead in Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogue on Miracles 197 Chapter 11 Placing the Green Children of Woolpit 216 Afterword 239 Bibliography 247 Index 287 "This volume showcases a range of different approaches to strangers and strangeness across medieval western Europe. It focuses on how communities responded to the arrival of strangers and to different ways in which individuals and groups were constructed as estranged. Further, it reflects on different forms of border-crossing, from lived experience to literary imagination and from specific journeys in precise contexts to the conceptualisation of the shift from life to death. In the range of its contributions - applying linguistic, historical, archaeological, architectural, archival, literary, and theological analyses - it seeks to bring together disciplines and geographical areas of study that are too often strangers to one another in medieval studies. Contributors are Sherif Abdelkarim, Anna Adamska, Adrien Carbonnet, Wim De Clercq, Florian Dolberg, Joshua S. Easterling, Susan Irvine, Marco Mostert, Richard North, James Plumtree, Euan McCartney Robson, Beatrice Saletti, Simon C. Thomson and Gerben Verbrugghe"-- Provided by publisher A multi-disciplinary study of experiences of encountering strangeness and being constructed as strange in medieval western Europe, demonstrating the importance of scholarship engaging with a range of evidence types and lived experiences.