Wassenaar J (2022)
Publication Type: Book chapter / Article in edited volumes
Publication year: 2022
Publisher: Heidelberg University Publishing
Edited Volumes: The Past Through Narratology: New Approaches to Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
Series: Das Mittelalter. Perspektiven mediävistischer Forschung. Beihefte
City/Town: Heidelberg
Book Volume: 18
Pages Range: 123-142
URI: https://heiup.uni-heidelberg.de/catalog/book/921/c13619?lang=en
DOI: 10.17885/heiup.921.c13619
Open Access Link: https://heiup.uni-heidelberg.de/catalog/book/921/c13619?lang=en
This article deals with depictions of townspeople in tenth- and early eleventh-century narratives. It argues that during the tenth century the narrative function of these groups in historiography changed fundamentally. In Carolingian and earlier tenth-century narratives, townspeople tend to play largely tangential and passive roles; from around the middle of the tenth century, authors began to increasingly accord agency and a more central role to townspeople. Although these mentions of townspeople in post-Carolingian histories have traditionally been approached as providing a window into processes of ‘embryonic’ urbanisation, this paper suggests that the shift in their narrative function must also be understood in the context of the changing nature of diocesan identity politics created through the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire.
APA:
Wassenaar, J. (2022). Townspeople, Group Belonging, and Collective Agency in Post-Carolingian Historiography. In Mateusz Fafinski und Jakob Riemenschneider (Eds.), The Past Through Narratology: New Approaches to Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. (pp. 123-142). Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing.
MLA:
Wassenaar, Jelle. "Townspeople, Group Belonging, and Collective Agency in Post-Carolingian Historiography." The Past Through Narratology: New Approaches to Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Ed. Mateusz Fafinski und Jakob Riemenschneider, Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2022. 123-142.
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