Translating Empires of the Saracens in European Epic

FAIN: HB-282649-22

Shirin Azizeh Khanmohamadi
San Francisco State University (San Francisco, CA 94132-1722)

Research and writing leading to a book that will reconsider Christian/Muslim relationships and the concept of translatio studii et imperii in medieval epic by analyzing examples of object exchange in selected texts.

My second book project, Translating Empires of the Saracens in European Epic, analyzes 12th-14th century medieval European epics, tracing within these narratives the movement from ‘Saracen’ or Muslim possession into ‘Frankish’ or Latin Christian possession of a set of symbolic objects conferring the imperial authority upon their bearers, among them swords, oliphants, horses, and sovereign tents. I argue that these object transfers serve as the material expression of the widespread (otherwise linguistic) trope of ‘translatio imperii et studii’, the transfer of past imperial authority and cultural prestige to Europe. Read in this way, these objects allow us to make a fresh case both for the central role of ‘Saracen’ or medieval Muslim empires in Europe’s earliest imperial self-fashioning and for medieval Europe’s inclusion of a Muslim inheritance among its cultural forebears.