A major reconsideration of the relationship between warrior aristocrats, epics, and heroes in medieval culture. The process of identity formation during the central Middle Ages (10th-12th centuries) among the warrior aristocracy was fundamentally centered on the paired practices of gift giving and violent taking, inextricably linked elements of the same basic symbolic economy. These performative practices cannot be understood without reference to a concept of the sacred, which anchored and governed the performances, providing the goal and rationale of social and military action. After focussing on anthropological theory, social history, and chronicles, the author turns to the "literary" persona of the hero as seen in the epic. He argues that the hero was specifically a narrative touchstone used for reflection on the nature and limits of aggressive identity formation among the medieval warrior elite; the hero can be seen, from a theoretical perspective, as a "supplement" to his own society, who both perfectly incarnated its values but also, in attaining full integrity, short-circuited the very mechanisms of identity formation and reciprocity which undergirded the society. The book shows that the relationship between warriors, heroes, and their opponents (especially Saracens) must be understood as a complex, tri-partite structure - not a simple binary opposition - in which the identity of each constituent depends on the other two. ANDREW COWELL isAssociate Professor of the Department of French and Italian, and the Department of Linguistics, at the University of Colorado.

An examination of medieval historican writings through the prism of violence. The concept of medieval historiography as "usable past" is here challenged and reassessed. The contributors' shared claim is that the value of medieval historiographical texts lies not only in the factual information the texts contain but also in the methods and styles they use to represent and interpret the past and make it ideologically productive. Violence is used as the key term that best demonstrates the making of historical meaning in the Middle Ages, through the transformation of acts of physical aggression and destruction into a memorable and usable past. The twelve chapters assembled here explore a wide range of texts emanating from throughout the francophone world. They cover a range of genres (chansons de geste, histories, chronicles, travel writing, and lyric poetry), and range from the late eleventh to the fifteenth century. Through examination of topics as varied as rhetoric, imagery, humor, gender, sexuality, trauma, subversion, and community formation, each chapter strives to demonstrate how knowledge of the medieval past can be enhanced by approaching medieval modes of historical representation and consciousness on their own terms, and by acknowledging - and resisting - the desire to subject them to modern conceptions of historical intelligibility. Noah D. Guynn is Associate Professor of French at the University of California, Davis; Zrinka Stahuljak is Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. Contributors: Noah D. Guynn, Zrinka Stahuljak, James Andrew Cowell, Jeff Rider,Leah Shopkow, Matthew Fisher, Karen Sullivan, David Rollo, Deborah McGrady, Rosalind Brown-Grant, Simon Gaunt

The first-ever collection of Aaniiih/Gros Ventre narratives to be published in the Aaniiih/Gros Ventre language, this book contains traditional trickster tales and war stories. Some of these stories were collected by Alfred Kroeber in 1901, while others are contemporary, oral stories, told in the past few years. As with the previous titles in the First Nations Language Readers series, Aaniiih/Gros Ventre Stories comes with a complete glossary and provides some grammar usage. Delightfully illustrated, each story is accompanied by an introduction to guide the reader through the material. The Aaniiih/Gros Ventre people lived in the Saskatchewan area in the 1700s, before being driven south during the 1800s to the Milk River area in Montana, along the USA/Canada border.

An examination of the ideas of space and place as manifested in medieval texts, art, and architecture. This interdisciplinary collection of sixteen essays explores the significance of space and place in Late Antique and medieval culture, as well as modern reimaginings of medieval topographies. Its case studies draw on a wide variety of critical approaches and cover architecture, the visual arts (painting and manuscript illumination), epic, romance, historiography, hagiography, cartography, travel writing, as well as modern English poetry. Challenging simplistic binaries of East and West, self and other, Muslim and Christian, the volume addresses the often unexpected roles played by space and place in the construction of individual and collective identities in religious and secular domains. The essays move through world spaces (mappaemundi, the exotic and the mundane East, the Mediterranean); empires, nations, and frontier zones; cities (Avignon, Jerusalem, and Reval); and courts, castles and the architectureof subjectivity, closing with modern visions of the medieval world. They explore human movement in space and the construction of time and place in memory. Taking up pressing contemporary issues such as nationalism, multilingualism, multiculturalism and confessional relations, they find that medieval material provides narratives that we can use today in our negotiations with the past. Julian Weiss is Professor of Medieval and Early Modern Hispanic Studies, Sarah Salih Senior Lecturer in English, at King's College London. Contributors: Richard Talbert, Paul Freedman, Sharon Kinoshita, Luke Sunderland, Julian Weiss, Sarah Salih, Konstantin Klein, Katie Clark, Elizabeth Monti, Elina Gertsman, Elina Rasanen, Geoff Rector, Nicolay Ostrau, Andrew Cowell, Joshua Davies, Chris Jones, Matthew Francis

A bison and a bobtailed horse race across the sky, raising a trail of dust behind them--leaving it, the Milky Way, to forever mark their path. An unknown Arapaho teller shared this account with an ethnographer in 1893, explaining how the race determined which animal would be ridden, which would be food. Traditional American Indian oral narratives, ranging from origin stories to trickster tales and prayers, constitute part of the great heritage of each tribe. Many of these narratives, gathered in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, were obtained or published only in English translation. Although this is the case with many Arapaho stories, extensive Arapaho-language texts exist that have never before been published--until now. "Arapaho Stories, Songs, and Prayers" gives new life to these manuscripts, celebrating Arapaho oral narrative traditions in all the richness of their original language.
Working with Alonzo Moss, Sr., and William J. C'Hair, two fluent native speakers of Arapaho, Andrew Cowell retranscribes these texts--collected between the early 1880s and the late 1920s--into modern Arapaho orthography, and retranslates and annotates them in English. Masterpieces of oral literature, these texts include creation accounts, stories about the Arapaho trickster character Nih'oo3oo, animal tales, anecdotes, songs, prayers, and ceremonial speeches. In addition to a general introduction, the editors offer linguistic, stylistic, thematic, and cultural commentary and context for each of the texts.
More than any other work, this book affords new insights into Arapaho language and culture. It expands the Arapaho lexicon, discusses Arapaho values and ethos, and offers a uniquely informed perspective on Arapaho storytelling. An unparalleled work of recovery and preservation, it will at once become "the" reference guide to the Arapaho language and its texts.

A bison and a bobtailed horse race across the sky, raising a trail of dust behind them - leaving in their wake the Milky Way to forever mark their path. An unknown Arapaho teller shared this account with an ethnographer in 1893, explaining that the race determined which animal would be ridden, which would be food. Traditional American Indian oral narratives, ranging from origin stories to trickster tales and prayers, constitute part of the great heritage of each tribe. Many of these narratives, gathered in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, were obtained or published only in English translation. Although this is the case with many Arapaho stories, extensive Arapaho-language texts exist that have never before been published - until now. Arapaho Stories, Songs, and Prayers gives new life to these manuscripts, celebrating Arapaho oral narrative traditions in all the richness of their original language. Working with Alonzo Moss, Sr., and William J. C'Hair, two fluent native speakers of Arapaho, Andrew Cowell retranscribes these texts - collected between the early 1880s and the late 1920s - into modern Arapaho orthography, and retranslates and annotates them in English. Masterpieces of oral literature, these texts include creation accounts, stories about the Arapaho trickster character Nih'oo3oo, animal tales, anecdotes, songs, prayers, and ceremonial speeches. In addition to a general introduction, the editors offer linguistic, stylistic, thematic, and cultural commentary and context for each of the texts. More than any other work, this book affords new insights into Arapaho language and culture. It expands the Arapaho lexicon, discusses Arapaho values and ethos, and offers a uniquely informed perspective on Arapaho storytelling. An unparalleled work of recovery and preservation, it will at once become the reference guide to the Arapaho language and its texts.

Naming the World examines language shift among the Northern Arapaho of the Wind River Reservation, Wyoming, and the community's diverse responses as it seeks social continuity. Andrew Cowell argues that, rather than a single ""Arapaho culture,"" we find five distinctive communities of practice on the reservation, each with differing perspectives on social and more-than-human power and the human relationships that enact power. As the Arapaho people resist Euro-American assimilation or domination, the Arapaho language and the idea that the language is sacred are key rallying points-but also key points of contestation. Cowell finds that while many at Wind River see the language as crucial for maintaining access to more-than-human power, others primarily view the language in terms of peer-oriented identities as Arapaho, Indian, or non-White. These different views lead to quite different language usage and attitudes in relation to place naming, personal naming, cultural metaphors, new word formation, and the understudied practice of folk etymology. Cowell presents data from conversations and other natural discourse to show the diversity of everyday speech and attitudes, and he links these data to broader debates at Wind River and globally about the future organization of Indigenous societies and the nature of Arapaho and Indigenous identity.