Pure and impure gestes: the generation of history in Jean d’Outremeuse's Myreur des histors

ABSTRACT

Scholars have long debated the place in medieval historiography of Jean d’Outremeuse's Myreur des histors, a universal history in celebration of Liège written in French around 1399. The abundance of Old French epic material in a chronicle that, according to its author, contained translations of only Latin sources, was once a source of outrage. The Myreur now holds significant interest, however, for its evidence of late medieval narrative strategies. This study demonstrates the Myreur's deliberate adaptation of epic material to glorify Liège. The author reimagines the Carolingian past as a source for future historical narratives by knowingly altering the genealogical framework of the chanson de geste universe. Carrying tales of sexual impurity, he describes the demise of the Carolingian line and transforms figures from epic to function within his linear history. This inventive approach allowed him to create a new hero- and history-generating lineage for his universal history.     

White matter—Maximien Parchappe and the integration of articulate language

ABSTRACT

The Imperial Academy of Medicine of Paris met in the spring of 1865 to discuss the localization of speech. One of the participants was Maximien Parchappe (1800–1866), an alienist whose research interests lay in the cerebral cortex. This article addresses Maximien Parchappe’s concept that the cognitive elements of language—such as the translation of thoughts into words, the will to express them, and the means to do so—reside within the cortical gray matter, and that they are integrated through white-matter fibers. In so doing, Parchappe anticipated Carl Wernicke’s linking of the posterior aspects of the dominant frontal and temporal lobes in verbal expression, and Jules Dejerine’s linking of the angular gyrus and Wernicke’s area in the understanding of written language. Functional imaging has revived interest in language as a network of neuronal aggregates and has given new relevance to Parchappe’s concept of the functional organization of language.     

En tiempos del condestable Dávalos: Enrique de Aragón,poeta quejoso en Crónica. Año de 1420, de Jerónimo de la Escosura

Infants of Aragon are very important figures in the history and literature of the nineteenth century, but it is rare that one of them, Don Enrique, is the protagonist. This work analyzes the romantic story Cronica. Año de 1420, published by Jerónimo de la Escosura in 1839. In it, Enrique de Aragón is a cunning courtier and a poet in love, and he manages to change history because he changes the story with his verses.