Historiography and Identity VI

The volume discusses Central European and Eastern Central European historiographies of the High and Late Middle Ages. It deals with histories written in a time which brought about a profound differentiation of medieval societies in these regions. The demand for reassuring identifications grew the more pressing as new social strata achieved their share of economic and political power. Narratives of identification produced and reproduced by historiography were tailored specifically for distinct social groups often using their languages: the vernaculars instead of the universal language of elite education, Latin. The focus of the volume is on the strategies of identification that individual works developed to balance many alternative modes of identification. Of an eminent interest is the interplay between the languages. In this interplay, orality and literacy interacted, with mutual effects on each other. The publication offers deep insights in these and related questions and herewith fills a significant scholarly gap.