European University Institute Library

Violence and risk in medieval Iceland, this spattered isle, Oren Falk

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

illustrationsmaps

index present

non fiction

Violence and risk in medieval Iceland

electronic resource

bibliographydictionaries

1253689316

Oren Falk

Oxford scholarship online.

this spattered isle

Historians spend a lot of time thinking about violence: bloodshed and feats of heroism punctuate practically every narration of the past. Yet historians have been slow to subject 'violence' itself to conceptual analysis. What aspects of the past do we designate violent? To what methodological assumptions do we commit ourselves when we employ this term? How may we approach the category 'violence' in a specifically historical way, and what is it that we explain when we write its history? Astonishingly, such questions are seldom even voiced, much less debated, in the historical literature. This book lays out a cultural history model for understanding violence. Using interdisciplinary tools, it argues that violence is a positively constructed asset, deployed along three principal axes - power, signification, and risk.--, Provided by publisher

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