A Chanson de Roland, obra construída no século XIX como fundadora da literatura francesa, foi bastante explorada ao longo dos últimos 150 anos, muitas vezes com usos políticos, nem sempre expressos. Apesar de exaustivamente trabalhada pelos estudos literários, são quase inexistentes as investigações históricas sobre o seu conteúdo cristão e suas possíveis relações com a legitimação do combate contra os pagãos. Este trabalho investiga de que forma os pagãos são representados na gestas do final do século XI, e como estas constroem uma alteridade através da religião, da moralidade, da territorialidade, e da etnicidade. Investiga também como os cristãos são representados dentro uma unidade pan-européia, numa sobreposição das noções de império e cristandade, e como sua luta contra os pagãos é legitimada, e mesmo santificada, pelas obras, através do martírio dos seus cavaleiros. / The Song of Roland, explored in the nineteenth century as the main text of French literature, was heavily exploited over the past 150 years, often with political uses, not always expressed. Despite extensive work by literary studies, there hardly any historical research on its Christian content and its possible association with the legitimacy of the combat against the pagans. This work investigates how the pagans are represented in the gestas of the late eleventh century, and how they build an otherness through religion, morality, territoriality, and ethnicity.It also investigates how Christians are represented in a pan-European unity, in a superposition of the notions of empire and Christianity, and how their fight against the heathen is legitimated and even sanctified through the martyrdom of their knights.

This bachelor’s thesis studies the construction of martyrs and martyrdom in Palestine. The study uses a discourse analysis to analyse data gathered from focus group interviews with Palestinian university students in the West Bank. Observations in the West Bank are also used to an enhanced understanding of the production. The theoretical framework of the thesis is based upon thoughts about nations and nationalism. The theoretical framework is connected to the Palestinian nation and nationalism to comprehend how martyrs and martyrdom are constructed in Palestine. The analysis is divided into five chapters: The first chapter discusses the importance of martyrs and martyrdom in Palestine. In the second chapter, tributes to martyrs are discussed. The meaning of martyrs and martyrdom are analysed in an abstract way in the third chapter, which focuses on martyrs’ ideology and ethical considerations. The fourth chapter analyses the construction of martyrs and martyrdom trough concrete Palestinian examples. The last chapter discusses martyrs and martyrdom in a non-Palestinian Arabic/Islamic context, the chapter analyses nonterritorial communities. Conclusions that are drawn, are that martyrs and martyrdom have no meaning, instead the phenomena are constructed in different ways depending on what discourse it is that produces martyrs and martyrdom. Three main discourses are found. The first and strongest is the Palestinian nationalism. The other are Islam and Arab, that influence and are influenced by the Palestinian nationalism. Furthermore, martyrs and martyrdom are constructed as morally/ethically good and innocent, the phenomena also produced good and innocence to the Palestinian nation.

Esta dissertação tem como tema o martírio cristão em escritos mendicantes no século XIII. Busca aprofundar reflexões sobre a temática martirológica da seguinte maneira: primeiramente, posiciona o martírio em relação a outros tipos de morte, destaca os fatores de aproximação e distanciamento entre o morto comum e o mártir e levanta, a partir da análise dos conceitos de “sagrado” e “violência”, duas hipóteses explicativas para a diminuição de canonizações oficias de mártires no século XIII. Uma trata dos problemas em torno do sujeito que executa o papel ativo na cena do martírio, ou seja, o assassino. Outra reflete sobre dispositivos de controle da violência e a possibilidade de terem diminuído o status oficial do mártir. Após, visa analisar como os conceitos de martírio e mártir eram trabalhados nos escritos das ordens franciscana e dominicana e como se distanciavam de alguns conceitos que antecederam essas ordens. A partir da história intelectual, percebe-se que em alguns momentos após as perseguições aos cristãos no âmbito do Império Romano, a morte deixou de ser exigida, sendo enfatizado o sofrimento para a configuração do mártir. Os mendicantes efetuam um retorno à exigência da morte. Por último, centra a atenção sobre Pedro de Verona, mártir dominicano morto em 1252 e canonizado em 1253. Propõe-se, por um viés de antropologia histórica, analisar as relações de intercâmbio em que o frade foi visto como participante pelos produtores dominicanos de textos sobre sua vida, morte e culto. / This paper works with the Christian martyrdom in the mendicant writings of the thirteenth century. In three chapters, it seeks to deepen reflections on the subject of martyrology as follows: in the first one, it positions martyrdom in relation to other types of death, highlights the factors of approximation and distance between the common dead and the martyr and raises, from the analysis of the concepts of “sacred” and “violence”, two explanatory hypotheses for the reduction of official canonizations of martyrs in the thirteenth century. One deals with the problems surrounding the subject who performs the active role in the scene of martyrdom, that is, the killer. Another reflects on the mechanisms to control violence and the possibility of it having diminished the official status of the martyr. The second chapter aims at analyzing how the concepts of martyrdom and martyr were worked out in the writings of the Franciscan and Dominican orders and how they deviated from some concepts that preceded these Orders. Through intellectual history, it can be seen that at some moments after the persecution of Christians under the Roman Empire, death was no longer required, and the suffering was emphasized for the configuration of the martyr. The mendicants make a return to the requirement of death. The third chapter focuses on Peter of Verona, a Dominican martyr who died in 1252 and was canonized in 1253. It is proposed, through a bias of historical anthropology, to analyze the relations of exchange in which the friar was seen as a participant by the Dominican producers of texts about his life, death and cult.

abstract: Since 1998 and as recently as November 2018, 165 Tibetans have burned themselves alive in public protest, both inside Tibet and in exile. This study foregrounds Tibetan refugees’ interpretations of the self-immolation protests and examines how the exile community has socially, politically, and emotionally interrogated and assimilated this resistance movement. Based upon eleven months of ethnographic field research and 150 hours of formal interviews with different groups of Tibetan refugees in northern India, including: freedom activists, former political prisoners, members of the exile parliament, teachers of Tibetan Buddhism, families of self-immolators, and survivors of self-immolation, this project asks: What does activism look like in a time of martyrdom? What are the practices of solidarity with the dead? How does a refugee community that has been in exile for over three generations make sense of a wave of death occurring in a homeland most cannot access? Does the tactic of self-immolation challenge Tibetan held conceptions of resistance and the conceived relationship between politics, religion and nation? These questions are examined with attention to the sociopolitical expectations and vulnerabilities that the refugee community face. This study thus analyzes what it means to mourn those one never knew, and examines the fractious connections between resistance, solidarity, trauma, representation, political exigency, and community cohesion. By examining the uncomfortable affect around self-immolation, its memorialization and representation, the author argues that self-immolation is a relational act that creates and ushers forth witnesses. As such, one must analyze the obligations of witnessing, the barriers to witnessing, and the expectations of solidarity. This project offers the theory of exigent solidarity, whereby solidarity is understood as a contested space, borne of expectation, pressure, and responsibility, with its expression complex and its execution seemingly impossible. It calls for attention to the affective labor of solidarity in a time of ongoing martyrdom, and demonstrates that in the need to maintain solidarity and social cohesion, a sense of mutual-becoming occurs whereby the community is reconciled uneasily into a shared fate. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Justice Studies 2019

This thesis studies elite men and women’s uses of Greek classical and early Christian texts in order to provide a more nuanced view of the relationship between knowledge of Greek language and the religious controversy between Catholics and Protestants in the English Reformation from 1516 to 1558. It addresses some of the misconceptions of Greek and its connection to Protestant heresy during the Reformation, while also explaining the ways that men and women used Greek in developing and maintaining individual religious identities in sixteenth century England. This research illuminates the ways that Greek literature, reborn in Early Modern European society, influenced Protestant and Catholic educated men and women as they sought to exhibit dignity in the face of religious persecution.

explains the reasons behind Boko Haram's unconventional tactic of kidnapping uses abductees as 'human bombs' Boko Haram's unconventional Kidnapping for at Boko Haram's martyrdom concept must have failed Overall, this dissertation concludes that Boko Haram's Kidnapping

This study examines how an existentialistic perspective in a secular context can be enforcedby interpretations of the Self from a Christian martyr narrative. The existentialistic perspective being the questioning of meaning of life and death. The purpose of is to see how different interpretations can attribute a meaning of Christian martyrdom by using a Christian tradition of self-identification. Two martyr stories are further explored, the story of Kayla Mueller and the story of Father Jacques Hamel. This study presents an analysis of the two martyr narratives, consisting of different perspectives of interpreting the construction of a martyr narrative and a shaping of a narrative self. The two narratives are used to test a theoretical landscape of approaching an ability to attribute meaning of martyrdom and, thus, a meaning of life. Based on theories of the narrative Self, identity and meaning by Ricoeur, Heidegger, Derrida and Taylor, a theoretical framework of pragmatist hermeneutics is applied. An analysis method of mediated narrative analysis by Bamberg (2008) and Page (2018) is used, for the purpose of including situation and interaction in the stories told about the martyrs. The results show that an application of a pragmatist hermeneutic approach is relevant and possible to relate to, also in a contemporary and secular context. This is possible by assuming a process of self-identification, which, by some, is identified as a natural part in a Christian confession. Therefore, a Christian tradition of self-identification is relevant and possible to apply, also in a secular context, when questioning the meaning of life and death.

No description available.

This thesis examines attitudes and approaches towards death, as well as aesthetic representations of death, in Anglo-Saxon hagiography. The thesis contributes to the discussion of the historical and intellectual contexts of hagiography and considers how saintly death-scenes are represented to form commentaries on exemplary behaviour. A comprehensive survey of death-scenes in Anglo-Saxon hagiography has been undertaken, charting typical and atypical motifs used in literary manifestations of both martyrdom and non-violent death. The clusters of literary motifs found in these texts and what their use suggests about attitudes to exemplary death is analysed in an exploration of whether Anglo-Saxon hagiography presents a consistent aesthetic of death. The thesis also considers how modern scholarly fields such as thanatology can provide fresh discourses on the attitudes to and depictions of ‘good' and ‘bad' deaths. Moreover, the thesis addresses the intersection of the hagiographic inheritance with discernibly Anglo-Saxon attitudes towards death and dying, and investigates whether or not the deaths of native Anglo-Saxon saints are presented differently compared with the deaths of universal saints. The thesis explores continuities and discontinuities in the presentations of physical and spiritual death, and assesses whether or not differences exist in the depiction of death-scenes based on an author's personal agenda, choice of terminology, approaches towards the body–soul dichotomy, or the gender of his or her subject, for example. Furthermore, the thesis investigates how hagiographic representations of death compare with portrayals in other literature of the Anglo-Saxon period, and whether any non-hagiographic paradigms provide alternative exemplars of the ‘good death'. The thesis also assesses gendered portrayals of death, the portrayal of last words in saints' lives, and the various motifs relating to the soul at the moment of death. The thesis contains a Motif Index of saintly death-scenes as Appendix I.

[pt] A Revolução Islâmica ocorrida em 1979 no Irã deve ser entendida como um processo formador de consenso político sob a liderança do ativismo religioso. As tensões que marcaram a sociedade iraniana na segunda metade do século XX puderam ser reunidas em um projeto de nação elaborado com maior intensidade pelo aiatolá Khomeini durante seu exílio na França. Seus discursos dessa época são portadores de um vocabulário político alicerçado em experiências da fé militante reconhecidas por grande parte dos iranianos como manifestações de um projeto de poder legítimo. Com a vitória da revolução e a implantação de uma República Islâmica no país, elementos desse léxico político são incorporados à nova Constituição Nacional, mantendo o domínio dos religiosos e concedendo pequenos espaços de negociação política à setores que apoiaram a revolução, tais como os liberais e os socialistas. O projeto de nação aplicado à Carta Constitucional se adapta ao novo quadro político do país, influenciado por questões internas como a consolidação da teoria do wilayat- i faqih; e por demandas externas como a Guerra Irã-Iraque iniciada em 1980. / [en] The Islamic Revolution of 1979 in Iran should be understood as a process of building political consensus under leadership of religious activism. The conflicts that marked the Iranian society during the second half of the twentieth century have been gathered in a project of nation developed mostly by Ayatollah Khomeini during his exile in France. His speeches at that time were accompanied by political language grounded in experiences of militant faith recognized by most of the Iranians as manifestations of a legitimate power project. After the victory of 1979`s revolution and implantation of the Islamic Republic in Iran, elements of this political lexicon are incorporated into the new National Constitution, maintaining the dominance of the religious and granting small spaces for political discussion to sectors that have supported the revolution, such as liberals and socialists. The project of nation applied to the Constitutional Letter suits the new political portrait in the country, influenced by internal affairs such as the consolidation of the wilayat al-faqih theory; and by external demands such as the Iran-Iraq War started in 1980.