Digital Commons Network^™

The City Encomium In Medieval And Humanist Spain, Jeffrey Stephen Ruth

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation narrates the history of city encomia in Spain from the genre's roots in the eighth-century De laude Spanie of Isidore through the humanist laudes urbium of ca. 1455 to 1506. Preliminary context for the Spanish tradition is provided in a survey of classical and medieval theoretical writings for the praise of place. The major European city encomia from those periods are also presented.

Ancient authors tended to write about Iberia as a unit—Hispania—rather than to focus on its regions or cities. Hence the establishment of the early laus Hispaniae tradition in passages of Pliny, Solinus, Claudian, and Pacatus. …