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Foundations responds to the pressing need for new primary texts on the premodern world. The series fits Arc’s academic mission to work with scholars of the past in expanding our collective horizons. This source of accessible new texts will refresh research resources, engage students, and support the use of innovative approaches to teaching. The series takes a flexible, case-by-case approach to publishing. The works may be original language editions, facing-page (with English translation) editions, or translations. Each edition includes a contextual introduction and explanatory notes to help the reader situate the text.

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5 results in Foundations

Al-Idrisi's Norman Kingdom in the South
  • 'The Book of Roger' in Translation
  • Edited and translated by Katherine Jacka, Ahmed Fatima Kzzo, Matt King, Sherif Abdelkarim
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    09 January 2025
    Print publication:
    31 May 2024
  • 'The Book of Roger' is a twelfth-century Arabic geographical treatise commissioned by King Roger II of Sicily and compiled by the Muslim polymath al-Idrisi. On its completion in around 1157 it was the most detailed description of the known world produced up to that point. This translation covers Sicily, the seat of King Roger's government, along with the other parts of the Norman kingdom in the South: southern Italy, the Adriatic, and Ifriqiya, as well as the book's preface.

    Presented in English translation for the first time this text offers insight into Roger's motivation in commissioning such an endeavour, and the relationship between king and scholar. A comprehensive introduction explores what this important work tells us about the Norman kingdom in the South in the Middle Ages, while a series of detailed maps will enhance the reader's appreciation of the richness of al-Idrisi's data.

Cleomadés and the Marvellous Flying Wooden Horse
  • A Thirteenth-Century Romance by Adenet le Roi
  • Translated by Anna Moore Morton
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    18 December 2024
    Print publication:
    30 April 2024
  • A translation into English of Albert Henry's definitive edition of Adenet le Roi's 'Cleomadés', a story based on a tale from 'The One Thousand and One Nights'.

    Palace and pageantry, music and feast contribute to the poetic beauty of the tale, in which the hero Cleomadés and his sweetheart Clarmondine share love of an intensity evoking that of Layla and Majnun, of Isolde and Tristan, of Guinevere and Lancelot. When adventures with a mechanical flying horse separate them disastrously, the lovers undertake epic journeys and devise ingenious ruses to effect their eventual union. In medieval French tradition, their ardour is the consuming passion of the narrative. However, Cleomadés is replete with material on the status of women, of the disabled, of the insane, of religious toleration, of violent behaviour, of duty toward parents. Produced in Paris in 1285 under the patronage of Marie de Brabant, queen of France and daughter of Adenet's first patron, Cleomadés crowns its author's illustrious career.

Tales of Love, Cleverness, and Violence in Tomaso Costo's Fuggilozio (1596)
  • Translated into English
  • Edited and translated by Tommaso Astarita
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    08 May 2024
    Print publication:
    30 April 2024
  • This selection from Tomaso Costo's Fuggilozio (The Cure for Indolence, 1596) translates entertaining, dramatic, or witty examples of the over four hundred stories and anecdotes of the original. Together, they offer an engaging window into the lively culture and society of Naples and Italy generally. Though the story-tellers are all from the city's elite, the characters in the stories they tell run the social and professional gamut, from peasants to emperors, and the variety and brevity of the tales offers something for all readers who can smile at human foibles, silliness, and naughtiness, and admire cleverness and guile. Costo, in spite of his introductory claim that the book is meant to guide its audience to virtue and away from vice, also at times indulges in blunt innuendos and jokes that can still surprise us today.

The Perils of Persiles and Sigismunda, a Northern Saga by Miguel de Cervantes
  • Edited by William Thomas Little
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    20 February 2024
    Print publication:
    30 November 2023
  • Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, historia septentrional (1617) is Miguel de Cervante's last major work. Virtually ignored for the past four hundred years and overshadowed by the acclaim accorded Don Quixote, it is due a revival. As indicated by this new English title, The Perils of Persiles and Sigismunda, a Northern Saga, this challenging saga-like fiction follows an attractive young prince and princess who undertake a perilous pilgrimage by sea and on land from their North Atlantic islands to Rome.

    This new translation by William Thomas Little takes full account of recent scholars' ground-breaking research and their new readings. It also includes a selected bibliography, a contextualizing introduction, and footnotes on the text that clarify for contemporary readers cultural issues that were readily known to seventeenth-century readers in Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, and England.

Pagans in the Early Modern Baltic
  • Sixteenth-Century Ethnographic Accounts of Baltic Paganism
  • Edited and translated by Francis Young
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    26 May 2022
    Print publication:
    31 March 2022
  • The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was the last European polity to renounce paganism and accept the Christian faith, at the end of the fourteenth century. However, the conversion of the Baltic region continued into the early modern period and the ongoing pagan beliefs and practices of Lithuanians and Prussians excited the interest of early ethnographers. This volume brings together Jan Lasicki's On the Gods of the Samogitians, Jan Malecki’s Little Book on the Sacrifices and Idolatry of the Old Prussians, and other Latin texts on Baltic paganism, none of which have hitherto been translated into English. A critical introduction places these texts, which are of interest far beyond the field of Central European history, in the contexts of early modern ethnography, Baltic history, and Reformation religious polemic.