New Books in Western European Studies

If you are reading this, it’s probably hard—nearly impossible—to imagine a world without writing—without print, books, newspapers, signs, graffiti, advertisements, forms, letters, texts, internet memes, and New Books Network blogposts like this one. How would you do your work? How would you communicate with your friends and family? How would you learn about the world around you?The historians in this conversation have written path-breaking books that deepen our understanding of an age when the written word was still emerging as a feature in everyday life. These books focus on different places—Russia and the Netherlands—where writing and print emerged quite differently but they share a deep erudition and ambitious methodological creativity in endeavoring to account for the ephemeral.Simon Franklin is emeritus professor of Russian history at University of Cambridge, Clare College. His books include Writing Society and Culture in Early Rus, 950–1300 (2002), The Emergence of Rus, 750–1200 (1996), co-authored with Jonathan Shepard, and Information and Empire: mechanisms of Communication in Russia, 1600–1850 (2017), co-edited with Katherine Bowers. In The Russian Graphosphere, 1450–1850 (Cambridge UP, 2019) Franklin reconstructs with deep erudition and carefully contextualized sleuthing the concrete and conceptual ways in which people in Russia from the mid-sixteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries encountered various types of writing.Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen are historians at University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Pettegree’s books include The Invention of News (2014), Brand Luther: 1517, printing and the making of the Reformation (2015), and most recently, The Book at War: Libraries and Readers in an Age of Conflict (2023). Arthur der Weduwen followed up his award-winning first monograph, Dutch and Flemish Newspapers of the Seventeenth Century with the newly released State Communication and Public Politics in the Dutch Golden Age (2023). As has Simon Franklin, they have brought great creativity to the history of texts. Known for its now world-famous still life paintings produced by the affluent incubator of capitalism that was the seventeenth-century Netherlands, Bookshop of the World: Making and Trading Books in the Dutch Golden Age (Yale UP, 2020) shows us that what was going onto the canvases in the Dutch Golden Age paled in comparison to what was coming off the printing presses. With many unexpected revelations, this ambitious attempt to account for the (perhaps?) countless texts that did not survive demonstrates how the production, distribution, and consumption of books was central to economic, political, and cultural life in seventeenth-century Netherlands. They continue to collaborate on the Universal Short Title Catalogue and have also co-authored The Library: A Fragile History (2021).Erika Monahan is the author of The Merchants of Siberia: Trade in Early Modern Eurasia (Cornell UP, 2016) and a 2023-2024 Alexander von Humboldt Fellow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

England and the Papacy in the Early Middle Ages: Papal Privileges in European Perspective, c. 680-1073 (Oxford University Press, 2023) by Dr. Benjamin Savill provides the first dedicated, book-length study of interactions between England and the papacy throughout the early middle ages. It takes as its lens the extant English record of papal privileges: legal diplomas drawn-up on metres-long scrolls of Egyptian papyrus, acquired by pilgrim-petitioners within the city of Rome, and then brought back to Britain to negotiate local claims and conflicts.How, why, and when did English petitioners choose to invoke the distant authority of Rome in this way, and how did this compare to what was taking place elsewhere in Europe? How successful were these efforts, and how were they remembered in later centuries?By using these still-understudied papal documents to reassess what we know of the worlds of Bede, the Mercian Supremacy, the West Saxon 'Kingdom of the English', and the Norman Conquest—locating them in the process within a comparative, Europe-wide setting—this book offers important new contributions to Anglo-Saxon studies, legal and documentary history, papal history, and the study of early medieval Europe more widely.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Ingenious Trade: Women and Work in Seventeenth-Century London (Cambridge University Press, 2021) by Dr. Laura Gowing recovers the intricate stories of the young women who came to London in the late seventeenth century to earn their own living, most often with the needle, and the mistresses who set up shops and supervised their apprenticeships. Through an intensive and creative archival reconstruction, Dr. Gowing recovers the significance of apprenticeship in the lives of girls and women, and puts women's work at the heart of the revolution in worldly goods.Tracking women through city archives, Dr. Gowing reveals the extent and complexity of their contracts, training and skills, from adolescence to old age. In contrast to the informal, unstructured and marginalised aspects of women's work, this book uses legal records and guild archives to reconstruct women's negotiations with city regulations and bureaucracy. It shows single women, wives and widows establishing themselves in guilds both alongside and separate to men, in a network that extended from elites to paupers and around the country.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Covering political, military, economic and social history, Norway in the Second World War: Politics, Society and Conflict (Bloombury, 2020) is the most authoritative book on the subject in the English language.This innovative study describes how the Germans conquered Norway in 1940 and the type of government that was then imposed. German organisations such as the Wehrmacht, the SS and the civilian Reichskommissariat are all presented, along with how they operated during the occupation. Ole Kristian Grimnes examines the Norwegian Nazi Party and the important role that it played during the period, as well as analysing how the Norwegian economy became integrated into the German war economy. The Norwegian resistance (including the Communists) and the Norwegian government-in-exile are explored in detail, while a separate chapter on the Holocaust in both Norwegian and international contexts is also included. As such, Norway in the Second World War is the definitive text on war and Nazi occupation in a nation that has been sorely neglected by the literature in the field until now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Under the Swastika in Nazi Germany (Bloomsbury, 2023) begins in flames in 1933 with Adolf Hitler taking power and ends in the ashes of total defeat in 1945. Kristin Semmens tells that story from five different perspectives over five chronologically distinct phases in the Third Reich's lifespan. The book offers a much-needed integrated history of insiders and outsiders - Nazis, accomplices, supporters, racial and social outsiders and resisters - that captures the complexity of Germans' lives under Hitler. Incorporating recent research and the voices of those who often remain silent in histories of this period, Under the Swastika in Nazi Germany delivers an up to date, engaging and accessible introduction. Its narrative is further supported by well-chosen images, some familiar and others rarely seen. By revealing the potent combination of coercion and consent at work during the dictatorship, the book allows a deeper understanding of Nazi Germany and provides a vital platform for further inquiry into these twelve years of German history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

How 'green' were people in late antiquity and the Middle Ages? Unlike today, the nature around them was approached with faith, trust and care. The population size was many times smaller than today and human impact on nature not as extreme as it is now. People did not have to worry about issues like deforestation and sustainability. This book is about the knowledge of plants and where that knowledge came from. How did people use earth and plants in ancient times, and what did they know about their nutritional or medicinal properties? From which plants one could make dyes, such as indigo, woad and dyer's madder? Is it possible to determine that through technical research today? Which plants could be found in a ninth-century monastery garden, and what is the symbolic significance of plants in secular and religious literature? Claudine Chavannes-Mazel and Linda Ijpelaar's The Green Middle Ages: The Depiction and Use of Plants in the Western World 600-1600 (Amsterdam UP, 2023) addresses these and other issues, including the earliest herbarium collections, with a leading role for the palaeography and beautiful illuminations from numerous medieval manuscripts kept in Dutch and other Western libraries and museums. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Derk Venema's edited volume Supreme Courts Under Nazi Occupation (Amsterdam UP, 2022) is the first extensive treatment of leading judicial institutions under Nazi rule in WWII. It focusses on all democratic countries under German occupation, and provides the details for answering questions like: how can law serve as an instrument of defence against an oppressive regime? Are the courts always the guardians of democracy and rule of law? What role was there for international law? How did the courts deal with dismissals, new appointees, new courts, forced German ordinances versus national law? How did judges justify their actions, help citizens, appease the enemy, protest against injustice? Experts from all democracies that were occupied by the Nazis paint vivid pictures of oppression, collaboration, and resistance. The results are interpreted in a socio-legal framework introducing the concept of 'moral hygiene' to explain the clash between normative and descriptive approaches in public opinion and scholarship concerning officials' behaviour in war-time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

In Living under the Evil Pope (Brill, 2019), Martina Mampieri presents the Hebrew Chronicle of Pope Paul IV, written in the second half of the sixteenth century by the Italian Jewish moneylender Benjamin Neḥemiah ben Elnathan (alias Guglielmo di Diodato) from Civitanova Marche. The text remained in manuscript for about four centuries until the Galician scholar Isaiah Sonne (1887-1960) published a Hebrew annotated edition of the chronicle in the 1930s. This remarkable source offers an account of the events of the Papal States during Paul IV's pontificate (1555-59). Making use of broad archival materials, Martina Mampieri reflects on the nature of this work, its historical background, and contents, providing a revised edition of the Hebrew text as well as the first unabridged English translation and commentary.Martina Mampieri has been granted a special mention of excellence in the Alberigo Award 2021 by the European Academy of Religion and Fondazione per le Scienze Religiose. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Marvels like enchanted rings and sorcerers’ stones were topics of fascination in the Middle Ages, not only in romance and travel literature but also in the period’s philosophical writing. Rather than constructions of belief accepted only by simple-minded people, Michelle Karnes shows that these spectacular wonders were near impossibilities that demanded scrutiny and investigation.Medieval Marvels and Fictions in the Latin West and Islamic World (U Chicago Press, 2022) is the first book to analyze a diverse set of writings on such wonders, comparing texts from the Latin West—including those written in English, French, Italian, and Castilian Spanish —with those written in Arabic as it works toward a unifying theory of marvels across different disciplines and cultures. Karnes tells a story about the parallels between Arabic and Latin thought, reminding us that experiences of the strange and the unfamiliar travel across a range of genres, spanning geographical and conceptual space and offering an ideal vantage point from which to understand intercultural exchange. Karnes traverses this diverse archive, showing how imagination imbues marvels with their character and power, making them at once enigmatic, creative, and resonant. Skirting the distinction between the real and unreal, these marvels challenge readers to discover the highest capabilities of both nature and the human intellect. Karnes offers a rare comparative perspective and a new methodology to study a topic long recognized as central to medieval culture.Michelle Karnes is professor of English and the history of philosophy and science at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages and the coeditor of Studies in the Age of Chaucer.Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Debapriya Sarkar’s new book, titled Possible Knowledge: The Literary Forms of Early Modern Science (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023) is a study of how poets and philosophers took up the “the possible” as an alternative to the actual. By pushing back against the positivism we associate so strongly with the scientific revolution, the literary texts examined in this book—Margaret Cavendish’s poetry and prose, Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Milton’s Paradise Lost—invited their readers to inhabit worlds-not-yet-known, to take up uncertainty and contingency as habits of thought.I am excited to welcome Debapriya Sarkar to the podcast to discuss Possible Knowledge. Debapriya is Professor of English at the University of Connecticut. Debapriya has published articles in English Literary Renaissance, Spenser Studies, and Shakespeare Studies. She has received long-term fellowships from the Huntington Library, and the Folger Shakespeare Library.John Yargo is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Boston College. He earned a PhD in English literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, specializing in the environmental humanities and early modern culture. In 2023, his dissertation won the J. Leeds Barroll Prize, given by the Shakespeare Association of America. His peer-reviewed articles have been published or are forthcoming in the Journal for Early Modern Culture Studies, Early Theatre, Studies in Philology, and Shakespeare Studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies