Mapping Pre-Modern Sicily: Maritime Violence, Cultural Exchange, and Imagination in the Mediterranean, 800-1700 - Hardcover

by Emily Sohmer Tai (Editor), Kathryn L. Reyerson (Editor)

Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Maritime Violence: Piracy and War: The Struggle for the Strait.- Chapter 3: The Sicilian Vespers: Roger de Lauria and the Ambiguities of Violence.- Chapter 4: The Art of Raiding: The Catalan-Aragonese 1292 Expedition into the Aegean Sea.- Chapter 5: Logistical Arrangements Between Sicily and Southern Italy during Alfonso V's Conquest of Naples, 1435-1442.- Chapter 6: Travel and Trade: Violence and Exchange in Post-Norman Sicily.- Chapter 7: Grand Tour and Pilgrimage: Sicily in the Imagination of Ibn Jubayr.- Chapter 8: Four men in a boat. Trade practices between the French Midi and the Kingdom of Sicily in the 12^th and 13^th centuries.- Chapter 9: Literary and Material Culture: Creating the "Communitas Siciliae" in the Post-Vespers Years.- Chapter 10: "The Luxuriant Southern Scene: " Textiles, Clothing and Memory in the Medieval Kingdom of Southern Italy and Sicily.- Chapter11: Ghosts of Admiral Roger: Piracy and Political Fantasy in Tirant lo Blanc.- Chapter 12: Digital Sicily: Digital Mapping Technology and the War of Sicilian Vespers: Using New Methods to Better Understand Old Problems.- Chapter 13: The Norman Sicily Project: A Digital Portal to Sicily's Norman Past.

Back Jacket

This book synthesizes three fields of inquiry on the cutting edge of scholarship in medieval studies and world history: the history of medieval Sicily; the history of maritime violence, often named as piracy; and digital humanities. By merging these seemingly disparate strands in the scholarship of world history and medieval studies into a single volume, this book offers new insights into the history of medieval Sicily and the study of maritime violence. As several of the essays in this volume demonstrate, maritime violence fundamentally shaped experience in the medieval Mediterranean, as every ship that sailed, even those launched for commerce or travel, anticipated the possibility of encountering pirates, or dabbling in piracy themselves.

Author Biography

Emily Sohmer Tai is Associate Professor of History at Queensborough Community College, CUNY, USA.
Kathryn L. Reyerson is Distinguished University Teaching Professor at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA.