![William Kynan-Wilson](https://0.academia-photos.com/492880/351912/15410777/s200_william.kynan-wilson.jpg)
William Kynan-Wilson
My research explores cultural exchange in the medieval and early modern periods, working at the intersection of art historical studies, literature and cultural history. I am particularly interested in the relationship between travel literature and visual culture in the Mediterranean world. I am currently writing a monograph on Ottoman costume books and editing several unpublished early modern travel accounts. My research on medieval Europe currently centres on twelfth- and thirteenth-century writers including William of Malmesbury, Gerald of Wales, and Matthew Paris.
I completed my PhD in Art History under the supervision of Professor Paul Binski FBA at the University of Cambridge. My thesis examined Anglo-Norman writings on the art and archaeology of Rome in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
I am a Senior Lecturer in Art History at the Open University, and have previously held positions at the University of Bristol, Aalborg University in Denmark, the Freie Universität and Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin, in addition to visiting research fellowships in Ankara, Athens, and Rome.
I am a member of the Editorial Board for the journal Classica et Medievalia:
https://tidsskrift.dk/classicaetmediaevalia/about
I am a member of the Societas Latina Daniae, which promotes Latin language, literature and culture in Denmark:
http://eafondretshistorie.dk/stifterne-societas-latina-daniae/
I have also collaborated and consulted with various museums and cultural institutions including: the British Museum, the V&A, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and Sotheby's Islamic Art Department.
I completed my PhD in Art History under the supervision of Professor Paul Binski FBA at the University of Cambridge. My thesis examined Anglo-Norman writings on the art and archaeology of Rome in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
I am a Senior Lecturer in Art History at the Open University, and have previously held positions at the University of Bristol, Aalborg University in Denmark, the Freie Universität and Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin, in addition to visiting research fellowships in Ankara, Athens, and Rome.
I am a member of the Editorial Board for the journal Classica et Medievalia:
https://tidsskrift.dk/classicaetmediaevalia/about
I am a member of the Societas Latina Daniae, which promotes Latin language, literature and culture in Denmark:
http://eafondretshistorie.dk/stifterne-societas-latina-daniae/
I have also collaborated and consulted with various museums and cultural institutions including: the British Museum, the V&A, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and Sotheby's Islamic Art Department.
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Some of the chapters in this book focus on the visual, ritual and spatial communication that visitors encountered when they met the peripatetic papal curia in Rome or elsewhere, and how this informed their experience of papal self-representation. The essays analyse papal clothing as well as the iconography, architecture and use of space in papal palaces and the titular churches of Rome. Other chapters explore communication over long distances and analyse the role of gifts and texts such as letters, sermons and historical writings in relation to papal communication. Importantly, this book emphasises the plurality of responses to papal communication by engaging with the reception of papal messages by different audiences, both secular and ecclesiastical, and in relation to several geographic regions including England, France, Ireland, Italy and Switzerland.
In the first major book-length study of Henry to be published since 1932, nine scholars explore new perspectives on the most crucial aspects of his life and legacy. By bringing ecclesiastical and documentary historians together with archaeologists and historians of art, architecture, literature and ideas, this interdisciplinary collection will serve as a catalyst for renewed study of this fascinating man and the world in which he operated.
Contributors: Martin Biddle, Barbara Bombi, John Crook, Claire Donovan, M.J. Franklin, Edmund King, William Kynan-Wilson, Matthew M. Mesley, John Munns
https://tidsskrift.dk/classicaetmediaevalia/issue/view/8057/751
This essay examines the production and consumption of papal communication in the central Middle Ages. It outlines the development of the papacy, which formed the historical and political framework for papal communication, and discusses the processes, themes and meanings behind various types of communication relating to the papacy in Latin Christendom principally between the years 1100 and 1300. Particular emphasis is placed upon the plurality of responses to papal communication and on the relationship between papal communication and authority, and papal self-identity and perceptions. The essay introduces seven diverse and interdisciplinary articles in a special issue of the Journal of Medieval History on the papacy and communication in the central Middle Ages.
Il presente articolo esamina le descrizioni testuali del sorridere, del ridere e dello scherzare con il Papa nella Roma del XIII secolo. Si focalizza in particolare su due resoconti anglo-normanni di controversie nella curia papale: il 'Chronicon abbatiae de Evesham' di Thomas of Marlborough (data di morte 1236) e il 'De jure et statu Menevensis ecclesiae' di Gerald of Wales (c. 1146–1220×23). In entrambi i testi sono presenti molti riferimenti attenti agli atti di sorridere, di ridere e di scherzare, in particolar modo in relazione a Papa Innocenzo III. Questi passaggi sono stati in precedenza interpretati come inequivocabili esempi di umorismo e amicizia, ma questo studio dimostra come gli autori usino queste ‘espressioni fisiologiche’ per descrivere immagini leggermente differenti della curia papale. Soprattutto questo articolo mostra come le descrizioni di interazione umoristica con il papa di Thomas of Marlborough e di Gerald of Wales giochino ruoli narrativi e mnemonici cruciali all'interno dei loro lavori.
The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to indicate the pervasive influence of textual sources that mediated William’s description of these Roman ruins. Second, to demonstrate how William carefully projects his own 'romanitas' (Romanness) onto his description of these archaeological remains. Through close textual reading and literary analysis it is shown that this scene is not a straightforward example of antiquarianism based upon personal observation, but instead a complex passage of literary inclination which indicates the wider cultural associations of Rome and 'romanitas' within William of Malmesbury's historical writings.
difficulties of applying the inherent rigidity of the concept to a period of great
fluidity. The examples under discussion are largely drawn from costume books and related imagery because this material both supports and problematises many tenets of Orientalism. First, there is evidence of greater plurality and dialogic exchange between East and West than the framework of Orientalism allows. What emerges is neither a picture of linear progression nor a concept solely fixed upon colonialism, but rather one in which multiple Orients and multiple Occidents flicker and disappear or, in some cases, become entrenched modes of understanding the Orient.
Reading Ottoman costume albums as a form of entertainment is a novel interpretation. These books have predominantly been characterised as objective and realistic in their iconography, encyclopaedic in scope, and didactic in function. Save for passing comments, there has been little discussion of these albums as items designed to entertain. My initial intention, therefore, is to demonstrate through a range of case-studies that Ottoman costume books made by both European and Ottoman artists were, on a fundamental level, created to entertain, and that this is significant in understanding the genre more widely.
Some of the chapters in this book focus on the visual, ritual and spatial communication that visitors encountered when they met the peripatetic papal curia in Rome or elsewhere, and how this informed their experience of papal self-representation. The essays analyse papal clothing as well as the iconography, architecture and use of space in papal palaces and the titular churches of Rome. Other chapters explore communication over long distances and analyse the role of gifts and texts such as letters, sermons and historical writings in relation to papal communication. Importantly, this book emphasises the plurality of responses to papal communication by engaging with the reception of papal messages by different audiences, both secular and ecclesiastical, and in relation to several geographic regions including England, France, Ireland, Italy and Switzerland.
In the first major book-length study of Henry to be published since 1932, nine scholars explore new perspectives on the most crucial aspects of his life and legacy. By bringing ecclesiastical and documentary historians together with archaeologists and historians of art, architecture, literature and ideas, this interdisciplinary collection will serve as a catalyst for renewed study of this fascinating man and the world in which he operated.
Contributors: Martin Biddle, Barbara Bombi, John Crook, Claire Donovan, M.J. Franklin, Edmund King, William Kynan-Wilson, Matthew M. Mesley, John Munns
https://tidsskrift.dk/classicaetmediaevalia/issue/view/8057/751
This essay examines the production and consumption of papal communication in the central Middle Ages. It outlines the development of the papacy, which formed the historical and political framework for papal communication, and discusses the processes, themes and meanings behind various types of communication relating to the papacy in Latin Christendom principally between the years 1100 and 1300. Particular emphasis is placed upon the plurality of responses to papal communication and on the relationship between papal communication and authority, and papal self-identity and perceptions. The essay introduces seven diverse and interdisciplinary articles in a special issue of the Journal of Medieval History on the papacy and communication in the central Middle Ages.
Il presente articolo esamina le descrizioni testuali del sorridere, del ridere e dello scherzare con il Papa nella Roma del XIII secolo. Si focalizza in particolare su due resoconti anglo-normanni di controversie nella curia papale: il 'Chronicon abbatiae de Evesham' di Thomas of Marlborough (data di morte 1236) e il 'De jure et statu Menevensis ecclesiae' di Gerald of Wales (c. 1146–1220×23). In entrambi i testi sono presenti molti riferimenti attenti agli atti di sorridere, di ridere e di scherzare, in particolar modo in relazione a Papa Innocenzo III. Questi passaggi sono stati in precedenza interpretati come inequivocabili esempi di umorismo e amicizia, ma questo studio dimostra come gli autori usino queste ‘espressioni fisiologiche’ per descrivere immagini leggermente differenti della curia papale. Soprattutto questo articolo mostra come le descrizioni di interazione umoristica con il papa di Thomas of Marlborough e di Gerald of Wales giochino ruoli narrativi e mnemonici cruciali all'interno dei loro lavori.
The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to indicate the pervasive influence of textual sources that mediated William’s description of these Roman ruins. Second, to demonstrate how William carefully projects his own 'romanitas' (Romanness) onto his description of these archaeological remains. Through close textual reading and literary analysis it is shown that this scene is not a straightforward example of antiquarianism based upon personal observation, but instead a complex passage of literary inclination which indicates the wider cultural associations of Rome and 'romanitas' within William of Malmesbury's historical writings.
difficulties of applying the inherent rigidity of the concept to a period of great
fluidity. The examples under discussion are largely drawn from costume books and related imagery because this material both supports and problematises many tenets of Orientalism. First, there is evidence of greater plurality and dialogic exchange between East and West than the framework of Orientalism allows. What emerges is neither a picture of linear progression nor a concept solely fixed upon colonialism, but rather one in which multiple Orients and multiple Occidents flicker and disappear or, in some cases, become entrenched modes of understanding the Orient.
Reading Ottoman costume albums as a form of entertainment is a novel interpretation. These books have predominantly been characterised as objective and realistic in their iconography, encyclopaedic in scope, and didactic in function. Save for passing comments, there has been little discussion of these albums as items designed to entertain. My initial intention, therefore, is to demonstrate through a range of case-studies that Ottoman costume books made by both European and Ottoman artists were, on a fundamental level, created to entertain, and that this is significant in understanding the genre more widely.
Previous scholars have viewed these albums as straightforwardly accurate depictions of Ottoman culture and society. Indeed, it has been widely argued that these books acted as practical guides for European merchants or as pictorial travelogues. Yet in truth, these albums are more complex and problematic records of travel than previously realised. Drawing upon several recently discovered and miscatalogued albums my paper will demonstrate that these drawings cannot simply reflect the travels or experiences of European visitors since the vast majority of albums contain exactly the same types of characters wearing the same costumes and adopting strikingly similar poses. Thus, what may have once been a genuine scene of Ottoman society swiftly became a stereotyped image produced for a mass audience and divorced of its original context. In this way these albums came to define the expectations, and therefore the experiences, of subsequent travellers in Ottoman Turkey.
Themes include the construction and questioning of papal authority, responses to gifts and giving and to rituals and liturgy, sermons and papal letters; encounters in papal assemblies; historical writing in Anglo-Norman England; as well as discussions about the theoretical and methodological framework for studying papal communication in the Middle Ages.