Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

2 results

  • Prologue: Robert Sturmy’s Last Voyage

  • E. K. Myerson, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Desire for Syria in Medieval England
    Published online:
    01 December 2025
    Print publication:
    18 December 2025, pp 1-9

  • Summary

    I open with Robert Sturmy’s disastrous 1458 voyage. I introduce Sturmy, and set the scene of the trials of the Genoese, before listing his cargo. I establish the terms of my study, introducing my key frameworks: the concept of ‘Syriana’, the phenomenon of ‘post-Acre melancholia’, and the category of ‘Arabo-English literature’. I introduce the medieval geographical imagination of ‘Syria’, showing how the label was used variously in reference to the former Roman province, the crusading settlements, the Mamlūk administrative district and the broader region of the Holy Land. These materials are framed through analysis of artist Michael Rakowitz’s Trafalgar Square Fourth Plinth commission, The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist (2018), a lost Assyrian Lamassu recreated from tins of Iraqi date syrup. The structure and approach of the book draws this artwork, which articulates the entanglement of trade, conflict, consumption, dialogue, and human mobility.