Medieval Iberian Studies

Medieval Iberian Studies examines the languages, literatures, histories, and material culture of the Iberian Peninsula from roughly the fifth through the fifteenth centuries, a period shaped by the coexistence and conflict of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish communities. Scholars work closely with manuscripts and vernacular texts—among them the Galician-Portuguese song collections known as the Cantigas de Santa Maria, compiled under the Castilian king Alfonso X in the thirteenth century—to reconstruct how ideas, artistic forms, and political power moved across linguistic and religious boundaries. A central open question concerns how to read multilingual and multicultural exchange without either romanticizing convivencia or reducing it to simple antagonism. Ongoing work is also reassessing the relationship between oral epic traditions and written manuscript culture, asking how texts were composed, performed, and transmitted in ways that complicate the boundaries between author, scribe, and audience.

Works

99,041

Total citations

56,154

Keywords

MedievalIberianLiteratureHistoryManuscriptsCantigas de Santa Maria