L'Agenda des Médiévistes

A critical deep-drive into conceptions of power and society in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, this book brings together experts in fantasy literature, political sciences, economics, philosophy, history, and journalism to consider the intricate social tapestry of one of the most intricate worlds in modern fantasy. Surveying the Discworld’s institutionalised power structures from government and police to civil services, banks and societies, it explores ideas such as language, translation, humour, crowds, community, justice and coercion in the series’ major works. Featuring analyses of novels such as Men at Arms, Equal Rites, Carpe Jugulum, Guards! Guards!, Jingo, Night Watch, Wyrd Sisters, Witches Abroad and many more, this collection illuminates how Pratchett juxtaposed his narratives with contemporary reflections on social constructs. Broken down into parts looking at social power dynamics, building and destroying worlds and the power of language, the book offers a much-needed corrective to the dearth of scholarship on one of fantasy literature’s worldbuilding titans.

Table des matières :

Table of Contents

List of Figures
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Building a Fantasy Civilization. Introducing Power and Society in the Discworld
Justine Breton
Part 1: Social Power Dynamics
Chapter 1: Collective Strength, Collective Weakness: Crowds and their Uses on the Discworld
Bettina Juszak, York University
Chapter 2: Where the Streets Are Paved with Glod: The Role of Civil Society in Ankh-Morpork Community and Civic Life
Jon Dean, Sheffield Hallam University
Chapter 3: Freedom! Truth! and Justice! In the Big Wahoonie: Ankh-Morpork’s neo-Victorian Urbanity
Helena Esser, Independent Scholar
Chapter 4: (Imaginary) Genealogies of Power as Utopian Incitement: Reading Pratchett with Graeber (and vice versa)
Jann Kraus, Zurich University of Applied Science
Part 2: Tools for Building, Tools for Destroying
Chapter 5: Maps of the Future: Spatial Revolution in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld
Chris Lynch Becherer, University of Glasgow
Chapter 6: A ‘Vetinarian’ World Order: Diplomacy, Great Powers and Morals in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series
Guilhem Jean, Independent Scholar
Chapter 7: Political Idealism in the Discworld Novels
Ruchira Mandal, Lady Bradbourne College
Chapter 8: King Carrot and Fantasy Tropes: Refusing Power to Build a Better Society
Justine Breton, University of Lorraine
Part 3: The Power of Language
Chapter 9: Greatness and Small Miseries: Journalism in the Discworld Novels
Jean-Christophe Piot, Independent Scholar
Chapter 10: ‘People listen to me when I’m screaming’: Language and Empowerment in The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents
Anne Hiebert Alton, Central Michigan University
Chapter 11: ‘Let him be whoever he thinks he is’: Magic Conjuring Truth in Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters
Sarah Richardson, University of London
Chapter 12: The Power of Stories: Narrative Causality and Coercive Narratives in Pratchett’s Witches books
Yevheniia Orestivna Kanchura, Zhytomyr Polytechnic State University, and Jane Suzanne Carroll, Trinity College
Index

Informations pratiques :

Justine Breton, Power and Society in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. Building a Fantasy Civilization, Londres, Bloomsbury, 2025 ; 1 vol., 240 p. (Perspectives on Fantasy). ISBN : 978-1-35046-531-2. Prix : GBP 85,00.

Source : Bloomsbury

This volume publishes the content of 133 charters of Saint Louis, issued in the East during his first crusade. They come from the Latin manuscript 9778 of the National Library of France, which went overseas with the monarch. These documents from 1248 to 1254 shed light on the operation of the royal household in the Levant. In particular, they highlight two prosperous periods in 1250 and 1252, which saw the king granting a series of privileges from Acre and Caesarea of Palestine, and allow us to follow the early careers of new men coming from the Holy Land and France.

Ce volume publie le texte de 133 chartes de saint Louis, émises en Orient durant sa première croisade. Elles émanent du manuscrit latin 9778 de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, qui accompagna le monarque outre-mer. Ces documents des années 1248 à 1254 éclairent le fonctionnement de l’Hôtel du roi au Levant. Deux périodes fastes se détachent avec les années 1250 et 1252, qui virent le roi concéder des vagues de privilèges à partir d’Acre et de Césarée de Palestine. Le registre de croisade présente le mérite de suivre le début de carrière d’ homines novi de Terre sainte et de France.

Pierre-Vincent Claverie, Ph.D. (2004), University of Paris I, has been a research fellow at the Cyprus Research Centre since 2015. He has published eighty studies on the Templars and the Latin Church in the East, including Honorius III et l’Orient (1216–1227) (Brill, 2013).

Table des matières : ici

Informations pratiques :

Le registre de croisade inédit de Saint Louis (1248–1254), éd. Pierre-Vincent Claverie, Leyde–Boston, 2025 ; 1 vol., VIII–180 p. (Mini-Monographs in Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 3). ISBN : 978-90-04-72905-6. Prix : € 85,00.

Source : Brill

Ce recueil de « propos » est un ensemble de réflexions sur l’appréhension du corps au Moyen Âge (VII^e-XV^e siècle), un corps conçu à la fois comme physique et comme « être social ». Les analyses se veulent interdisciplinaires, la fiction étant mise en contexte historique et en regard des textes savants.

Table des matières : ici

Informations pratiques :

Bernard Ribemont, Corpus medievale. Propos sur le corps au Moyen Âge, Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2025 ; 1 vol., 690 p. (Recherches littéraires médiévales, 45). ISBN : 978-2-406-17591-9. Prix : € 59,00

Source : Classiques Garnier

The rich tradition of pre-modern mystical writing from England is explored in this collection of essays from the ninth Exeter Symposium. The twelve chapters include studies of Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe and the author of The Cloud of Unknowing. There is work, too, on less familiar authors and texts, from the thirteenth-century Wooing Group to the sixteenth-century Carthusian Richard Methley; the English reception of continental mystics such as Bridget of Sweden and Mechthild of Hackeborn; and writers treading (and sometimes crossing) the line between mysticism and heresy. The authors employ a range of approaches, from detailed manuscript study to mystical theology, and from material culture to comparative mysticism.

E.A. JONES is Professor of English Medieval Literature and Culture in the Department of English at the University of Exeter.

Table des matières :

Editor’s Preface – E. A. Jones
On Loving God: Richard Rolle and the Spiritual Classics – Andrew Kraebel
Richard Rolle and the Heresy of the Free Spirit – Timothy Glover
Thirteenth-Century Passion Meditation: Embracing Christ in Cotton Nero A. XIV – Annie Sutherland
The Systems of Chapter Division of Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, Book I – Michael G. Sargent
Reflective Moons: Christian and Islamic Traditions in Medieval Europe – Ayoush Lazikani
Julian of Norwich’s Contemplative Poetics of Nought – Raphaela Rohrhofer
‘An Hayr in thin Hert’: Hairshirts, Cilices, and The Book of Margery Kempe – Christine Cooper-Rompato
Compiling Conversations: Women, Textuality and Orality in England in the Later Middle Ages – Liz Herbert McAvoy and Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa
Locating the Omniferous at Helfta – Laura Kalas
Mirroring The Cloud in Cambridge, MS Pembroke 221: Richard Methley’s Glosses to the Divina Caligo Ignorancie and Speculum Animarum Simplicium – Denis Renevey
The Cloud-Author and Hendrik Herp: Aspiratory Prayer in MS Douce 262 – Christiania Whitehead
Mysticism, Misattribution, and the Fifteen Oes – Jennifer N. Brown

Informations pratiques :

The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England. Papers read at Charney Manor, July 2023 [Exeter Symposium IX], éd. E.A. Jones, Woodbridge, D.S. Brewer, 2025 ; 1 vol., 218 p. (Medieval Mystical Tradition, 9). ISBN : 978-1-84384-742-7. Prix : GBP 85,00.

Source : Boydell and Brewer

Durant la longue période du Moyen Âge, les liens entre l’art et la théologie sont si intimes que l’histoire de l’art médiéval nous apparaît tout à fait étrange. Pour éclaircir cette étrangeté, le livre présente une première synthèse destinée à un large public : au lieu d’étudier, comme de l’extérieur, les formes et les styles de l’art du Moyen Âge, il tente de nous mettre dans le regard et dans l’esprit même de cette longue époque. Comment ? À partir de la présentation et de l’analyse de dix oeuvres prises dans des formes artistiques variées (enluminure, sculpture, vitrail, architecture…), il tente de percer la nature profonde des pensées qui lient indissociablement les théologiens et les artistes du Moyen Âge. Chaque oeuvre est étudiée dans son contexte historique. Chacune d’elles est décrite et interprétée de façon à immerger le lecteur au coeur de la richesse et de la complexité de la théologie chrétienne faite image : une image d’un Dieu qui s’est incarné.

Table des matières : ici

Informations pratiques :

Éric Palazzo, L’art médiéval comme théologie, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2025 ; 1 vol., 128 p. (Épures). ISBN : 979-1-04130-339-7. Prix : € 10,00.

Source : Presses universitaires de Rennes

The Roman Curia is the oldest extant body of institutional administration in the world. Indeed, it was the prototype for the development of centralized government in the monarchies of the Middle Ages. Further, it was the administrative backbone of the first worldwide organization in human history. It developed policies, laws, and procedures that continue to affect the entire world. This book offers scholarly contributions from the origins of the Curia to the early modern period.

Contributors include Barbara Bombi, Elena Bonora, Bruce Brasington, Sandro Carocci, Peter D. Clarke, Maria Teresa Fattori, Massimo Carlo Giannini, Anthony Lappin, Rita Lizzi Testa, Rosamond McKitterick, Dominic Moreau, Bronwen Neil, Miles Pattenden, Giovanni Pizzorusso, Donald Prudlo, Kirsi Salonen, Cesare Santus, and Danica Summerlin.

Table des matières : ici

Informations pratiques :

A Companion to the History of the Roman Curia, éd. Donald S. Prudlo, Leyde–Boston, Brill, 2025 ; 1 vol., XVI–390 p. (Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 107). ISBN : 978-90-04-18462-6. Prix : € 237,00.

Source : Brill