The Idea of the Mediterranean - Avinoam Shalem скачать в хорошем качестве

The Idea of the Mediterranean - Avinoam Shalem

Intersecting Historiographies: Henri Pirenne, Ernst Herzfeld, and the Myth of Origin It is widely accepted that the Mediterranean basin was the fluid medieval space that secured constant movements of persons and commodities, namely tangible objects and ideas. In this brief study, I would like to focus on a further ‘Mediterranean’ dynamic sphere of what I will call ‘intersecting historiographies.' At the core of this paper and as an exemplary case are two major scholarly figures: Henri Pirenne (1862-1935) and Ernst Herzfeld (1879-1948). Both were academically active and productive during the first half of the twentieth century, between the two world wars. In this respect, the writings and academic biographies of these two protagonists are the objects of my investigation. Pirenne’s and Herzfeld’s ‘minds,’ namely their cognitive modus operandi for making arguments and organizing material in a specific order so as to produce knowledge, form the subject of this inquiry. I discuss these issues as in themselves reflecting the collective, perhaps even global, intellectual scheme in place at the beginning of the twentieth century, a scheme that seemed to form ways of arranging and presenting historical evidence, literary and visual alike, and explaining it rationally, which endows the evidence thus constructed with meaning and significance.