Reviewed by:

• ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages ed. by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian N. Wood
• Georgina Pitt

This book is one of the most challenging and thought-provoking that I have read for a while. The volume has its genesis in the ‘special strand’ of ‘Otherness’ at the 2017 International Medieval Congress, Leeds, UK. The book contains the four keynote lectures (by Sylvia Huot, Nikolas Jaspert, Eduardo Manzano Morena, and Felicitas Schmieder), together with fourteen other papers from the conference ‘special strand’. The papers range across different geographical areas (extending beyond Europe) and use a variety of primary sources. They are written by contributors from different disciplines, who bring a range of methodological approaches to their task. The book’s challenge lies in both the concept of ‘Otherness’ and the breadth of the research presented. [End Page 257]

The introduction is probably the heaviest of the chapters, as the editors work their way through the intellectual complexities and multiple layers of the concept. They draw attention to the varieties of ‘Otherness’ that existed in the Middle Ages. Different iterations of ‘Otherness’ were simultaneously possible because the ‘Other’ was such a flexible notion. A conclusion of ‘Otherness’ could be based upon a selection of a single characteristic as the appropriate standard or measure. A person could view a specific individual as ‘Other’ based on ethnicity, but not as ‘Other’ if applying the filter of religion or gender. An assessment of ‘Otherness’ was therefore not a rigid classification and could depend upon representation and stereotypes.

Some of the complexities of modern methodologies of ‘Otherness’ the editors discuss are recent tendencies to use the term ‘Othering’, which emphasises the ongoing process of construction of the ‘Other’; and a focus on the ‘indicators, criteria and reasons of demarcation’ rather than simply an identification of ‘Otherness’ (p. 23). The editors also highlight the inherent relational basis of the concept: there can be no ‘Other’ without a ‘Self’. The editors chose to provide a survey of the theoretical landscape but did not require their contributors to adopt and develop all the issues that they raised in their introduction—and indeed, it would have been difficult to cover everything within a standard chapter length. The individual chapters vary in the theoretical issues they address.

The subject matter and time period of the individual papers varies considerably. In many of the chapters, there is an attempt to counterbalance old historiographical emphases on difference in the construction of identity with a consideration of belonging as a means of articulating identity. ‘Othering’ and ‘Saming’ are considered in relation to established categories such as ethnicity, religion, gender, and the law. Individual chapters deal with ‘Otherness’ between religious communities and within them (for example, Martin Borýsek’s analysis of internal encounters within distinct Jewish communities in seventeenth-century Corfu; Nick Koutrakou’s chapter on Byzantine monks). Clemens Gantner’s chapter, ‘Between a Rock and a Hard Place?’, considers the applicability of postcolonial theories to early medieval contexts in relation to political contestation in ninth-century southern Italy. Eduardo Manzano Moreno’s chapter analyses how early Islam borrowed institutional tools inherited from the late antique world to classify, exclude, and assimilate ‘Others’ in complex and contradictory ways. Roland Scheel’s chapter examines ‘Otherness’ as a mechanism used by Scandinavian communities to explain discordances between its historical past as revealed by the law codes referenced in the sagas and its thirteenth-century Christian values.

The types of source materials used by the contributors also range widely and include both documentary evidence and material culture. Individual chapters tend to focus on one form of evidence. Manuscripts and texts are well represented and diverse, including medieval histories, lineages, law codes, and retold Ovidian myths. There are chapters on mortuary culture and religious art and architecture. [End Page 258] This is not a comprehensive summary—I have picked out a few of the chapters to demonstrate just how widely this volume ranges.

I think that there are...

审阅者：

• 中世纪的“异类”编辑。作者：汉斯·沃纳·戈茨和伊恩·N·伍德
• 乔治娜·皮特

这本书是我读过一段时间以来最具挑战性和发人深省的书之一。该书起源于 2017 年英国利兹国际中世纪大会上的“他者”的“特殊链”。该书包含四场主题演讲（由 Sylvia Huot、Nikolas Jaspert、Eduardo Manzano Morena 和 Felicitas Schmieder 发表），以及会议“特殊部分”中的其他 14 篇论文。这些论文涵盖不同的地理区域（延伸到欧洲以外）并使用各种主要来源。它们是由来自不同学科的贡献者编写的，他们为他们的任务带来了一系列的方法论。这本书的挑战在于“他者”的概念和所提出的研究的广度。[完第257页]

引言可能是最重的章节，因为编辑们会通过知识的复杂性和概念的多个层次来解决这一问题。它们引起人们对中世纪存在的各种“异类”的关注。“他者”的不同迭代同时是可能的，因为“他者”是一个如此灵活的概念。“差异性”的结论可以基于选择单一特征作为适当的标准或措施。一个人可以根据种族将特定个人视为“其他”，但如果应用宗教或性别过滤器，则不会将其视为“其他”。因此，对“异类”的评估并不是严格的分类，可能取决于代表性和刻板印象。

编辑们讨论的现代“他者”方法论的一些复杂性是最近使用“他者”一词的趋势，它强调了“他者”的持续构建过程；并关注“划分的指标、标准和理由”，而不是简单地识别“他者”（第23页）。编辑们还强调了这一概念的内在关系基础：没有“自我”就不可能有“他者”。编辑们选择提供理论景观的调查，但不要求他们的贡献者采纳和发展他们在引言中提出的所有问题——事实上，很难在标准的章节长度内涵盖所有问题。各个章节所讨论的理论问题各不相同。

个别论文的主题和时间段差异很大。在许多章节中，都试图通过将归属感作为表达身份的一种手段来平衡旧的史学对身份建构差异的强调。“其他”和“相同”被认为与种族、宗教、性别和法律等既定类别有关。各个章节讨论宗教社区之间及其内部的“异类”（例如，马丁·鲍里斯克（Martin Borýsek）对十七世纪科孚岛不同犹太社区内部遭遇的分析；尼克·库特拉库（Nick Koutrakou）关于拜占庭僧侣的章节）。克莱门斯·甘特纳的章节“进退两难？” 考虑后殖民理论在中世纪早期背景下与九世纪意大利南部政治斗争的适用性。爱德华多·曼萨诺·莫雷诺的章节分析了早期伊斯兰教如何借用从晚期古代世界继承下来的制度工具，以复杂而矛盾的方式对“他者”进行分类、排除和同化。罗兰·谢尔（Roland Scheel）的章节探讨了“他者性”作为斯堪的纳维亚社区用来解释传奇故事中引用的法典所揭示的历史与十三世纪基督教价值观之间不一致的机制。

贡献者使用的源材料类型也广泛，包括文献证据和物质文化。各个章节倾向于关注一种形式的证据。手稿和文本内容丰富且多样，包括中世纪历史、血统、法典和重述的奥维德神话。其中有关于殡葬文化、宗教艺术和建筑的章节。[完第258页]这不是一个全面的总结——我挑选了一些章节来展示这本书的范围有多么广泛。

我认为有...