Review
"Exemplary and original in its focus, this study offers sophisticated close readings of French, Occitan, and Middle High German texts that evoke a complex range of ethical, affective, and cultural challenges." ― Choice
"Marisa Galvez’s The Subject of Crusade offers an original premise, that talking about crusading created a new 'idiom' which allowed speakers to explore many ideas beyond simply conquering lands for the benefit of Christendom. She invites readers to consider not only the theme of crusade addressed in specific medieval works, but also contemporary compositions. . . . This invitation is worthy, and her attempt to cover a wide swath of material opens a number of avenues for further research." ― Mediaevistik
“Leaving us with the impression that we never really read and thought with most of the voices that emerged from the experience of the Crusades, Galvez presents an entirely new and astoundingly rich picture of lyric texts and their ethical engagements. What she calls a descriptive historical poetics is much more than that. In an exemplary fashion, and theoretically inspiring throughout, she demonstrates how sophisticated close readings bring back to life a complex range of ethical, affective, and cultural challenges, reflected in Crusader texts and materials that in their force of articulation come to resist simple ideological appropriation. Exemplary, that is, in drawing attention to the fact that only in this reconstruction of particular voices in the contexts and intricacies of their articulation we discover the possibilities of thoughts and feelings that specific historical moments bring to bear.” -- Niklaus Largier, University of California, Berkeley
“This is a bold study that places literary forms, especially lyric and romance, into conversation with material culture to provide an account of ‘speaking crusade’: that is, the ways in which an ‘idiom’ was produced that communicates the ‘crusader subject,’ whether through poetics or the tangible form of the exotic sword, enigmatic inscription, or elaborate feast. Galvez moves smoothly across genres, as well as between theoretical framework and historical context, to produce a provocative book in which a body of literature conventionally read in terms of pilgrimage and inward penitence is instead placed in dialogue with the imagined—and real—frontiers of religious war." -- Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
About the Author
Marisa Galvez is associate professor of French and Italian and chair of undergraduate studies in French at Stanford University. She is the author of Songbook: How Lyrics Became Poetry in Medieval Europe, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
