Mythical Ancestry in World Cultures, 1400 – 1800
Edited by Sara Trevisan
From Europe to the Ottoman Empire, from Mesoamerica to the Mughal dynasty, rulers and peoples in the early modern period put deities and culture heroes in their family trees. The essays in this collection investigate the issues of ancestry, descent, kinship, and kingship that are revealed by this worldwide practice. The authors explore the meaning and role of ‘myth’ in different global cultures, and how the social role of myth defined identity through genealogical discourse. What did people understand by ‘mythical’ and how did they think of themselves as related to their mythical past? How seriously were these various claims of mythical descent taken? And how did claims function within the different power relations of societies around the globe? Up to now, the predominant Eurocentric perspective in early modern studies has encouraged a focus on Renaissance Greco-Roman mythology and its role in literature and art. This volume, however, breaks new ground through its unique exploration of the way in which the genealogical use of ‘myth’ was shared by world cultures.
- Edited by Sara Trevisan
Other Titles in this Series
Visions of Medieval History in North America and Europe
Studies on Cultural Identity and Power
Volume 41
A Renaissance Baron and his Possessions
Paolo Giordano I Orsini, Duke of Bracciano (1541-1585)
Volume 15
From Tyrant to Philosopher-King
A Literary History of Alexander the Great in Medieval and Early Modern England
Volume 19
Writing History in Medieval Poland
Bishop Vincentius of Cracow and the 'Chronica Polonorum'
Volume 28
Victorine Restoration
Essays on Hugh of St Victor, Richard of St Victor, and Thomas Gallus
Volume 39
Order into Action
How Large-Scale Concepts of World-Order determine Practices in the Premodern World
Volume 40
Dreams, Medicine, and Literary Practice
Exploring the Western Literary Tradition Through Chaucer
Volume 18
Luigi Pulci in Renaissance Florence and Beyond
New Perspectives on his Poetry and Influence
Volume 29
Andreas Vesalius and the ‘Fabrica’ in the Age of Printing
Art, Anatomy, and Printing in the Italian Renaissance
Volume 33
Saints and their Lives on the Periphery
Veneration of Saints in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe (c.1000-1200)
Volume 9
Material Restoration
A Fragment from Eleventh-Century Echternach in a Nineteenth-Century Parisian Codex
Volume 7
Similar Books
Between Bones and Beliefs
Human-Bird Relations in Central and Northern Europe in the First Millennium AD
Volume 4
Beyond Sovereign Courts
Agents and Practices in Early Modern Spanish and Habsburg Diplomacy
Volume 3
Circulation, Use, Impact
The Consumption of Architectural Books in the Early Modern Eastern Adriatic
Volume 1
Engaged Languages and Literatures / Langues et Littératures engagées
Critical Views / Regards Critiques
Legal Visuality
Exegesis, Ambiguity, and Dissimulation of the Donation of Constantine in the Early Modern Period
Naples as Laboratory / Laboratorium Neapel
Style Options, Artistic Rivalry and Self Fashioning in Neapolitan Baroque Painting / Plurale Stilbildung, Kunstlerkonkurrenz und Self Fashioning in der neapolitanischen Barockmalerei
Power and Women in Southeast and Central Europe in Late Medieval and Early Modern Period (1300-1600)
Volume 10
Students, Scholars and Their Books at the University of Louvain (1425-1797)
Studium Lovaniense: Learning across Borders, 1
Volume 17
Tradition, Interpretation, and Change
Developments in the Liturgy of Medieval and Early Modern Ashkenaz
La Suisse, espace privilegie du neoliberalisme / Die Schweiz, ein idealer Nahrboden fur den Neoliberalismus
Networking through Biography
Constructing Intellectual Junctions in Antiquity, the Renaissance and the Arabo-Islamic World
Volume 19
Art and Mysticism in Silesia in the Baroque Period
Angelus Silesius, Bernhard Rosa, and Michael Willmann
Building the Presence of the Prince
The Institutions Responsible for the Construction and Management of the Buildings of European Courts (14th-17th centuries)
Volume 14
