Universal History beyond Empire: Rethinking History-Writing, Identity and Temporality in the High Middle Ages, ca. 1070–1228.

Descripción del proyecto

Historia, identidad y memoria política en la Edad Media

Las narrativas históricas de la Edad Media configuraron las identidades colectivas, legitimaron el poder y definieron los ámbitos políticos y religiosos en general. Analizar cómo estas narrativas contribuyeron a la construcción de ideas de universalidad puede revelar nuevas perspectivas sobre la relación entre la memoria, el poder y la formación de la identidad en la Europa medieval. En el proyecto UniHistoria, respaldado por las acciones Marie Skłodowska-Curie, se pretende esclarecer cómo las narrativas sobre el pasado se adaptaron a distintos contextos políticos, religiosos e institucionales. mediante la comparación de textos procedentes de Inglaterra y el sur de Italia. La investigación aportará nuevos conocimientos sobre las redes intelectuales y los procesos culturales que configuraron el pensamiento histórico europeo.

Objetivo

This project offers a transformative reassessment of universal history-writing in High Medieval Europe, exploring its critical, but underexamined, role in shaping identities, political memory, and temporality beyond empires. Universal history has long been recognized as the dominant form of historical thought in the Middle Ages. Traditionally, it has been seen as a coherent ideological project to convey the providential history of universalising institutions such as empires. However, its broader adaptability and ideological function in non-imperial contexts remain largely unexplored. By comparing the writing of universal history in England and southern Italy, the project advances a new framework for understanding how narratives of the past were universalized to reshape sociopolitical identities, royal agency and complex constructions of temporality. Far from being ideologically static, these texts were reinterpreted to address specific political, religious, and institutional identity formations, functioning as vehicles for constructing universal awareness and framing political legitimacy. By integrating temporality studies with tailored digital humanities methods, this project challenges the traditional dichotomy between 'local' and 'universal' history, reveal instead how information networks and shifting conceptions of power shaped medieval historical frameworks. In so doing, the project offers fresh insights into the cultural dynamics entangling identity construction, historical thinking and the perception of the world. Ultimately, the project pioneers a new interdisciplinary approach to medieval historical writing, illuminating the intellectual infrastructure that enabled broader and more complex notions of universality to emerge across Europe in the High Middle Ages.