Literary studies: ancient, classical Books

Book SynopsisCapitalising on developments in the field over the past decade, Riddles at work provides an up-to-date microcosm of research on the early medieval riddle tradition. The book presents a wide range of traditional and experimental methodologies. The contributors treat the riddles both as individual poems and as parts of a tradition, but, most importantly, they address Latin and Old English riddles side-by-side, bringing together texts that originally developed in conversation with each other but have often been separated by scholarship. Together, the chapters reveal that there is no single, right way to read these texts but rather a multitude of productive paths. This book will appeal to students and scholars of early medieval studies. It contains new as well as established voices, including Jonathan Wilcox, Mercedes Salvador-Bello and Jennifer Neville.Trade Review'This collection of essays on the subject of the Old English and Anglo-Latin riddling traditions is the first of its kind and represents a major contribution to the field. It promises an up-to-date ‘microcosm’ of research on these texts and largely delivers on this, with the result that any new student or scholar, particularly of the Exeter Book Riddles, is now equipped with a clear starting point for their research.'The Review of English Studies'Riddles at Work can be described variously as a generous sampler, a rich buffet, a panoramic snapshot, or a sizeable cross-section of current Anglophone scholarship on early-medieval riddles originally written in both Anglo-Latin and Old English... Riddles at Work is a product of many authors who have demonstrated their ability to delight, frustrate, amuse, baffle, excite, terrify, impress, and make the readers think and re-think, nod enthusiastically in agreement, and learn something when they have to disagree.'The Medieval Review -- .Table of ContentsIntroduction – Megan Cavell, Jennifer Neville and Victoria SymonsExeter Book riddle titlesPart I: WordsIntroduction – Megan Cavell and Jennifer Neville1 Sorting out the rings: astronomical tropes in Þragbysig (R.4) – Jennifer Neville2 Wundor and wrætlic: the anatomy of wonder in the sex riddles – Sharon E. Rhodes3 Domesticating the devil: the early medieval contexts of Aldhelm’s cat riddle – Megan Cavell4 The crafting of sound in the riddles of the Exeter Book – Francesca Brooks5 Sound, voice, and articulation in the Exeter Book riddles –Robert StantonPart II: IdeasIntroduction – Megan Cavell and Jennifer Neville6 Warriors and their battle gear: conceptual blending in Anhaga (R.5) and Wæpnum Awyrged (R.20) – Karin Olsen7 Humour and the Exeter Book riddles: incongruity in Feþegeorn (R.31) – Jonathan Wilcox8 Memory and transformative fear in the Exeter Book riddles – Rafal Boryslawski9 Monstrous healing: Aldhelm’s leech riddle – Peter Buchanan10Freolic, sellic: an ecofeminist reading of Modor Monigra (R.84) – Corinne Dale11 Mind, mood and meteorology in Þrymful Þeow (R.1–3) – James PazPart III: InteractionsIntroduction – Megan Cavell and Jennifer Neville12 The nursemaid, the mother and the prostitute: tracing an insular riddle topos on both sides of the English Channel – Mercedes Salvador-Bello13 The moon and stars in the Bern and Eusebius riddles – Neville Mogford14 Enigmatic knowing and the Vercelli Book – Britt Mize15 The materiality of fire in Legbysig and Ligbysig (R.30a and b) and an unexpected new solution – Pirkko A. Koppinen16 Dyre cræft: new translations of Exeter riddle fragments Modor Monigra (R.84), Se Wiht Wombe Hæfde (R.89), and Brunra Beot (R.92), accompanied by notes on process’ – Miller Wolf ObermanAfterword – Megan Cavell and Jennifer NevilleIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis volume demonstrates how the Hundred Years War (13371453) provides a necessary context for late-medieval literature. It shows how war impacted the lives and works of major writers like Geoffrey Chaucer, Christine de Pizan, and Catherine of Siena, while also arguing for a transnational approach that moves beyond the Anglo-French core. -- .

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis innovative critical volume brings the study of Margery Kempe into the twenty-first century. Structured around four categories of ‘encounter’ – textual, internal, external and performative – the volume offers a capacious exploration of The Book of Margery Kempe, characterised by multiple complementary and dissonant approaches. It employs a multiplicity of scholarly and critical lenses, including the intertextual history of medieval women’s literary culture, medical humanities, history of science, digital humanities, literary criticism, oral history, the global Middle Ages, archival research and creative re-imagining. Revealing several new discoveries about Margery Kempe and her Book in its global contexts, and offering multiple ways of reading the Book in the modern world, it will be an essential companion for years to come.Trade Review'The essays gathered in the volume evince our growing understanding of the artistry that undergirds a text that was once considered important but possibly artless. It is this artistry, this sure sense of the dynamics of narrative, of voice, of social and religious conventions and culture, that holds the volume itself together, giving it the implicit unity a gifted author provides to her or his later readers....This is a good volume of essays with which to continue the process of exploration and the joys of discovery.'Lynn Staley, Harrington and Shirley Drake Professor of the Humanities, Colgate University, The Medieval Review -- .Table of ContentsIntroduction: Encountering The Book of Margery Kempe in the twenty-first century – Laura Kalas and Laura Varnam Part I: Textual encounters1 Before Margery: The Book of Margery Kempe and its antecedents – Diane Watt 2 The intertextual dialogue and conversational theology of Mechthild of Hackeborn and Margery Kempe – Liz Herbert McAvoy and Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa 3 The prayers of Margery Kempe: a reassessment – Josephine A. Koster Part II: Internal encounters4 The Book of Margery Kempe: autobiography in the third person – Ruth Evans5 Margery Kempe as de-facement – Johannes Wolf6 Margery Kempe, oral history, and the value of intersubjectivity – Katherine J. Lewis7 ‘A booke of hyr felyngys’: exemplarity and Margery Kempe’s encounters of the heart – Laura VarnamPart III: Encountering the world8 Margery Kempe’s home town and worthy kin – Susan Maddock9 A women’s network in fifteenth-century Rome: Margery Kempe encounters ‘Margaret Florentyne’ – Anthony Bale and Daniela Giosuè10 Margery Kempe, racialised soundscapes, sonic warss and cosmopolitan Jerusalem – Dorothy Kim11 The materialisation of Book II: elements of Margery Kempe’s world – Laura KalasPart IV: Performative encounters12 Writing performed lives: Margery Kempe meets Marina Abramovic – Sarah Salih13 Recreating and reassessing Margery and Julian’s encounter – Tara WilliamsIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisBestsellers and masterpieces: The changing medieval canon addresses the strange fact that, in both European and Middle Eastern medieval studies, those texts that we now study and teach as the most canonical representations of their era were in fact not popular or even widely read in their day. On the other hand, those texts that were popular, as evidenced by the extant manuscript record, are taught and studied with far less frequency. The book provides cross-cultural insight into both the literary tastes of the medieval period and the literary and political forces behind the creation of the ‘modern canon’ of medieval literature.Trade Review'The essays [...] invite the reader to consider the pre-modern and modern cultural milieu that led to specific works’ genesis and, centuries later, privileged position in the canon and to consider a place for once widely-transmitted works that have since been marginalized—two intellectual ventures that will undoubtedly enhance scholarship and undergraduate curricula.' Arthuriana -- .Table of ContentsIntroduction - Heather Blurton and Dwight F. ReynoldsPart I: Hanging by a thread: unique manuscripts and their place in the ‘modern’ medieval canon1. Contemplating books with Usama ibn Munqidh’s Book of Contemplation – Paul M. Cobb2. Dons and dragons: Beowulf and ‘popular reading’ – Daniel C. Remein and Erica Weaver3. Ibn ?azm’s ?awq al-?amama (The Neck-Ring of the Dove) – Boris Liebrenz4. 'Thirty pieces of silver': interpreting anti-Jewish imagery in the Poema de mio Cid manuscript – Ryan D. Giles5. ‘Let no bad song be sung of us’: fame, memory and transmission in/and the Chanson de Roland – Sharon KinoshitaPart II: Medieval bestsellers: reading the ‘medieval canon’?6. World literature and its discontents: reading the life of A?iqar – Daniel L. Selden7. The Alexander Romance in the age of scribal reproduction: the aesthetics and precariousness of a popular text – Shamma Boyarin8. Wisdom literature and the medieval bestsellers – Karla Mallette9. Lost worlds: encyclopedism and riddles in the tale of Tawaddud/Theodor – Christine ChismIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisVoice is a fleeting physical phenomenon that leaves behind traces of its existence. Medieval literary voices offers a wide-reaching approach to the concept of literary voices, both the vanished authorial ones and the implicit textual ones. Its impressive lineup deepens our understanding of how literary voices evoke the elusive voices lurking beyond the text, capturing the absent authorial voice, the traces of scribal voices and the soundscape of the uttered text. It explores multiple dimensions of medieval voice and vocalisations, and the interactions between literary voices and their authorial, scribal and socio-political settings. It contends that through the theorizing of literary voices we can begin to understand the ways in which medieval voices mediate or proclaim an embodied selfhood or material presence, how they dictate or contest moral conventions, and how they create and sustain narrative soundscapes.Table of ContentsIntroduction – Louise D’Arcens and Sif Rikhardsdottir1 Articulate voices – Ruth EvansPart I: Narrative embodiment and voicing2 Voice of authority: Free indirect discourse in Chaucer’s General Prologue – Helen Fulton3 Speaking in person – Fiona SomersetPart II: Authoritative, ethical and orthodox voices4 The body speaks in The Franklin’s Tale – Mishtooni Bose5 The sensology of the moral conscience: William Peraldus’s ethical voices – Richard Newhauser6 Langland parrhesiastes – Ian CorneliusPart III: Materiality and textual voices7 Margery Kempe, the leprous woman and the voice of St Paul – Lawrence Warner8 Listening for the scribe: punctuation and the voicing of late medieval devotional literature – Sarah Noonan9 Parrot poet: Humphrey Newton and Bodleian Library, MS Lat. Misc. c. 66 – Wendy ScasePart IV: Performative voices and medieval aurality10 Voice, materiality and history in St Erkenwald and Egils saga Skallagrímssonar – Sif Ríkharðsdóttir11 Embodying the Mandevillean voice – Sarah Salih12 Reconstructing Christine de Pizan’s musical voice in the twenty-first century – Louise D’ArcensAfterword: medieval voice: a tribute to David Lawton – John M. GanimBibliographyIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book offers new connections between Spenser and Shakespeare by showing how their works hone readers' and audiences' judgement about the social construction of aristocratic identity. -- .

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe heat of Beowulf develops a new approach to the aesthetics of Beowulf by engaging with the work of twentieth-century poets Robin Blaser and Jack Spicer, whose avant-garde poetics were informed by a serious encounter with the poem in the seminar of medievalist Arthur G. Brodeur. By considering Blaser’s and Spicer’s poetics as they were shaped by their encounter with Beowulf, the book is able to open up questions about the non-representational poetics of the poem, rebooting a mid-century approach to aesthetics on a new critical trajectory. The book considers the poem’s aesthetics through relationship translation theory, as well as early medieval discourses of sensory-affective experience and twentieth-century phenomenology. The heat of Beowulf reexamines the scholarship on Old English poetics from the mid-twentieth century as it intersected with post-war avant-garde poetics, and how understanding these critical histories can reshape how we read Beowulf now.Table of ContentsIntroduction: translative comparative poetics 1 The aesthetics of Beowulf in the middle of the twentieth century 2 ‘Heat’, early medieval aesthetics, and multisensory complexion in Beowulf 3 The heat of earmsceapen style: translatability and compound diction 4 ‘Real cliffs’: variation and lexical kinetics 5 Narrating heat in a hot world Afterword Appendix: catalog of ‘fire’ and ‘heat’ words in Beowulf Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisMarian maternity in late-medieval England takes advantage of the fifteenth century’s intense interest in the Virgin Mary, the best-documented mother of the medieval period, to examine the constructions and performances of maternity in vernacular religious texts. By bringing together texts and authors that are not often discussed in tandem, this study offers a rich examination of the multiple factors at play as Marian material circulated among experienced devotional readers. Taking a close look at the private devotional reading of late-medieval patrons, the book shows how texts including Chaucer’s poetry, Margery Kempe’s Boke, and legendaries of female saints are saturated with indirect references to and imitations of the Virgin. Marian maternity in late-medieval England employs a matricentric feminist approach to discern how readers’ devotional literacies inform their understanding and imitation of the Virgin’s maternal practice. Attending to internal cues in the texts, to manuscript contexts, and to the evidence and content of readers’ multiple literacies, the author examines Marian maternity as both theological concept and imitable practice. The result is a book that explains late-medieval perceptions of Mary’s maternity and sets them against readers’ devotional, emotional and relational circumstances.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Marian maternity, matricentric reading, and devotional literaciesPart I The reader: Margery Kempe’s devotional literacies and imitatio Mariae1 The Dominican literacies of Margery Kempe’s pilgrimages2 Mar(ger)y at the foot of the CrossPart II The genre: Defining Marian absence in legendaries of women3 The community service of mystics’ maternal bodies 4 ‘In Our Lady’s Binds’: Mary’s maternal peers in East Anglian devotionPart III The author: Chaucer as matricentric poet5 A Mary for every mother: mothers as agents of orthodoxy6 A Marian, maternal CeciliaConclusion: ‘Show yourself a mother’BibliographyIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisOver six hundred years before John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Anglo-Saxon authors told their own version of the fall of the angels. This book brings together various cultural moments, literary genres and relevant comparanda to recover that version, from the legal and social world to the world of popular spiritual ritual and belief. The story of the fall of the angels in Anglo-Saxon England is the story of a successfully transmitted exegetical teaching turned rich literary tradition. It can be traced through a range of genres – sermons, saints’ lives, royal charters, riddles, devotional and biblical poetry – each one offering a distinct window into the ancient myth’s place within the Anglo-Saxon literary and cultural imagination. Trade Review'One comes away from this book with a new appreciation for the motif of the fallen angels, both in its frequency and in its flexibility for interpretation and application.'Journal of English and Germanic Philology'Rebel Angels is a fantastic resource collating stories of angelic rebellion in early medieval England.'Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures -- .Table of ContentsList of figuresIntroduction1 Lands idle and unused2 The anxiety of inheritance3 Rebel clerics, monastic replacements4 The angels’ share5 A homeland as a possession6 A new praedestinati in Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi ad AnglosAfterwordBibliographyIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisBorn to a petty thief in London’s notorious Newgate prison and determined to make her way in a rapacious and materialistic society, Moll Flanders recounts the “fortunes and misfortunes” of her turbulent life in this 1722 novel. Though Moll Flanders was shaped by the conventions of criminal biography, Defoe also drew on other literary traditions and his own rich background to create a remarkably original—and still controversial—work. In addition to a critical introduction and substantial footnotes, this Broadview edition provides a wide range of writings by Defoe as well as contemporary responses to Moll Flanders. Other appendices include a selection of eighteenth-century writings on crime, prisons, and the Virginia colony.Trade Review“With this new edition of Moll Flanders, instructors are at last well-equipped to teach Defoe’s challenging and enigmatic novel. Scanlon has carefully edited and helpfully annotated the most authoritative text of Moll and supplied readers with a wealth of contemporary texts, including Defoe’s comments on women’s roles in urban life, that illuminate the complex cultural context into which Defoe launched his novel. These glimpses of Defoe’s other writings in combination with excerpts from literary contemporaries give students and general readers an unprecedentedly rich context in which to understand Moll Flanders.” — Melissa Mowry, St. John’s University, New YorkTable of ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroductionDaniel Defoe: A Brief ChronologyDefoe’s Times: A Brief ChronologyA Note on the TextMoll FlandersAppendix A: Related Writings by Defoe From An Essay upon Projects (1697) From the Review (19 February 1704-11 June 1713) From Applebee’s Journal (25 June 1720-14 May 1726) From Colonel Jack (1722) From Roxana (1724) From A Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724-27) From Conjugal Lewdness; Or, Matrimonial Whoredom (1727) From An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions (1727) From Street-Robberies, Consider’d [1728] Appendix B: Related Works by Other Writers From Hell Upon Earth (1703) Paul Lorrain, The Ordinary of Newgate (1709) From A Discourse and View of Virginia [1712] From Alexander Smith, The History of the Lives, of the MostNoted Highway-Men (1714) From The History of the Press-Yard (1717) Jonathan Swift, The Last Speech and Dying Words of Ebenezor Elliston (1722) From An Essay in Praise of Knavery (1723) From T. Read, The Life and Actions of Moll Flanders [c. 1723] From An Accurate Description of Newgate (1724) From The Matchless Rogue (1725) Appendix C: Defoe and Moll Flanders: Eighteenth-Century Views From The True-Born Hugonot, &c.A Satyr (1703) From Jonathan Swift, A Letter Concerning the Sacramental Test (1709) From Jonathan Swift, the Examiner (16 November 1710) From John Gay, The Present State of Wit (1711) From Joseph Addison, The Late Trial and Conviction of Count Tariff (1713) From Charles Gildon, Preface to The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Mr. D.… De F.… (1719) From Giles Jacob, The Poetical Register (1723) From the Preface to An Essay in Praise of Knavery (1723) From The Flying Post (1 March 1729) From Alexander Pope, The Dunciad Variorum (1729) From Richard Savage (?), An Author to be Lett (1729) From the Grub-street Journal (29 April 1731) From Read’s Weekly Journal (1 May 1731) From a Conversation with Alexander Pope (1742) From Theophilus Cibber, The Lives of the Poets (1753) From the Monthly Review (March 1775) From James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1778) From George Chalmers, The Life of Defoe (1786) From the Monthly Review (December 1787) From the Monthly Review (December 1790) Select Bibliography

Read more less

Book SynopsisMiddle English Legends of Women Saints presents a collection of saints' Lives intended to suggest the diversity of possibilities beneath the supposedly fixed and predictable surfaces of the legends, using multiple retellings of the same legend to illustrate that medieval readers and listeners did not just passively receive saints' legends but continually and actively appropriated them. The collection opens with legends about two royal (or supposedly royal) women, Frideswide and Mary Magdelen, and continues with those of three popular virgin martyrs, Margaret of Antioch, Christina of Tyre, and Katherine of Alexandria. The final portion of the collection is devoted to St. Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary. The collection includes a number of relatively unknown texts that have not appeared in print since Horstmann's transcriptions in the nineteenth century and a few that have never before been published.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments General Introduction General Bibliography Abbreviations I. The Legend of St. Frideswide of Oxford, an Anglo-Saxon Royal Abbess Introduction and Select Bibliography Shorter South English Legendary Life of St. Frideswide Explanatory Notes Textual Notes Longer South English Legendary Life of St. Frideswide Explanatory Notes Textual Notes II. The Legend of Mary Magdalen, Penitent and Apostle Introduction and Select Bibliography Early South English Legendary Life of Mary Magdalen Explanatory Notes Textual Notes John Mirk, Sermon on St. Mary Magdalen Explanatory Notes Textual Notes Mary Magdalen, from Speculum Sacerdotale Notes III. Three Popular Legends of Virgin Martyrs (a) Margaret of Antioch Introduction and Select Bibliography Stanzaic Life of Margaret Explanatory Notes Textual Notes John Mirk, Sermon on St. Margaret Explanatory Notes Textual Notes John Lydgate, "Lyfe of Seynt Margarete" Explanatory Notes Textual Notes (b) Katherine of Alexandria Introduction and Select Bibliography Stanzaic Life of Katherine Explanatory Notes Textual Notes John Mirk, Sermon on St. Katherine Explanatory Notes Textual Notes St. Katherine, from Speculum Sacerdotale Notes © Christina of Bolsena Introduction and Select Bibliography William Paris, Life of St. Christina Explanatory Notes Textual Notes IV. Legends of St. Anne, Mother of the Virgin Mary Introduction and Select Bibliography John Mirk, Sermon on the Conception of the Virgin Mary Explanatory Notes Textual Notes John Mirk, Sermon on St. Anne Explanatory Notes Textual Notes Osbern Bokenham, Life of St. Anne Explanatory Notes Textual Notes Glossary

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis edition contains four Middle English Charlemagne romances from the Otuel cycle: Roland and Vernagu, Otuel a Knight, Otuel and Roland, and Duke Roland and Sir Otuel of Spain. A translation of the romances' source, the Anglo-French Otinel, is also included. The romances centre on conflicts between Frankish Christians and various Saracen groups, and deal with issues of racial and religious difference, conversion, and faith-based violence.Table of ContentsGeneral Introduction Select Bibliography Roland and Vernagu Introduction Select Bibliography Text Notes Otuel a Knight Introduction Select Bibliography Text Notes Otuel and Roland Introduction Select Bibliography Text Notes Duke Roland and Sir Otuel of Spain Introduction Select Bibliography Text Notes The Anglo-French Otinel Introduction Select Bibliography Text and Translation Notes Glossary

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisA new, materialistic reading of the Alfredian corpus, drawing on diverse approaches from thing theory to Augustinian principles of use and enjoyment to uncover how these works explore the material world. The Old English prose translations traditionally attributed to Alfred the Great (versions of Gregory's Regula pastoralis, Boethius' De consolatione philosophiae, Augustine's Soliloquia and the first fifty Psalms) urge detachment from the material world; but despite this, its flotsam and jetsam, from costly treasures to everyday objects, abound within them. This book reads these original and inventive translations from a materialist perspective, drawing on approaches as diverse as thing theory and Augustine's principles of use and enjoyment. By focussing on the material, it offers a fresh interpretation of this group of translations, bringing out their complex, often contradictory, relationship with the material world. It demonstrates that, as in the poetic tradition, wealth in Alfredian literature is not simply a tool to be used, or something to be enjoyed in excess; rather, in moving away from these two static binaries, it shows that wealth is a current, flowing both horizontally, as an exchange of gifts between humans, and vertically, as a salvific current between earth and heaven. The prose translations are situated in the context of Old English poetry, including Beowulf, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, the Exeter Book Riddles and The Dream of the Rood.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Use and enjoyment in Old English literature 1. Books and ladders: The speaking prefaces 2. The stream of wealth: The Old English Pastoral Care 3. True riches: The Old English Boethius 4. The familiar and the strange: The Old English Soliloquies 5. Treasure in heaven: The Prose Psalms Conclusion: Transformations in prose and poetry Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisGeoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the most celebrated literary work of medieval England, portrays the culture of the late Middle Ages as a deeply commercial environment, replete with commodities and dominated by market relationships. However, the market is not the only mode of exchange in Chaucer’s world or in his poem. Chaucer’s Gifts reveals the gift economy at work in the tales. Applying important recent advances in anthropological gift theory, it illuminates and explains this network of exchanges and obligations. Chaucer’s Gifts argues that the world of the Canterbury Tales harbours deep commitments to reciprocity and obligation which are at odds with a purely commercial culture, and demonstrates how the market and commercial relations are not natural, eternal, or inevitable – an essential lesson if we are to understand Chaucer’s world or our own.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction: Chaucer’s Commodities, Chaucer’s Gifts 1 The Franklin’s Potlatch and the Plowman’s Creed: The Gift in the General Prologue 2 The Lack of Interest in the Shipman’s Tale: Chaucer and the Social Theory of the Gift 3 Giving Evil: Excess and Equivalence in the Fabliau 4 The Exchange of Women and the Gender of the Gift 5 Sacred Commerce: Clerics, Money and the Economy of Salvation 6 ‘Fy on a thousand pound!’ Debt and the Possibility of Generosity in the Franklin’s Tale Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisScholars each have their own rationale as to the ‘site’ of this momentous battle. Their thirst for recognition has created diverse arguments, some flooding the media, others proposing to the point of acrimony that they have this ‘site’. The ‘conundrum’ is whether any identification of the ‘site’ is correct for all, apart from the circumspect, have taken assorted place-names similar to Brúnanburh as their starting point. The author chose to disregard the place-name approach and look at the topographic references in the manuscript. The first references were maritime then latterly landscape leading to field-names which have a more stable base than the constantly changing place-names. He found inconsistences in various positions held by some scholars to that of historical record about Brúnanburh. One major stumbling block was the phrase “ón dingesmere” which has created controversy, some scholars totally dismissing it but the ‘sea of noise’ appears to have some scientific foundation. Obviously it had some special significance to the Anglo-Saxon’s and their Christian allies and may well have been a kenning. Importantly, ‘who were these allies?’ The challenge for the author was to unearth the correct locale of these historic events. As an archaeologist he decided to interpret the topographic phrases in the manuscript evidence as material culture. The results were surprising.

Read more less

Book SynopsisRegarded as the secondary source advocated by some scholars for this battle around Brúnanburh in AD 937, Egil’s Saga Skalla-Grímssonar (collated c. AD 1242-3) becomes problematical when compared with literary, historic and archaeological evidence. Thus, this argument places the saga in a rather awkward position. In addressing the general veracity of this saga, allegedly ‘written’ by Snorri Sturluson in 1240/1 we must draw a comparison to distinguish reality from fiction. For this article highlights not only the questionable traditions of Egil fighting at Brúnanburh but whether Snorri’s interpretation was motivated by self-interest. More importantly, could other people have gathered together Snorri’s notes and produced Egil’s Saga? Doubts arise as to its authenticity as many scholars have previously expressed the differing literary anomalies within the narrative. Was the saga written by more than one person? Was it embellished by Snorri or others? Where did the Brúnanburh traditions come from? Is it accurate enough to be used as a historic source – a factual reference? The author suggests this approach may identify the incongruities within this saga demonstrating a correct analysis.Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION; RAISON D'ÊTRE; SNORRI’S CHARACTER AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND; HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF THE LITERARY EVIDENCE; PAGAN RITUAL CONTRASTED TO EARLY CHRISTIAN BELIEFS; HISTORICAL AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE; THE SOCIO-RELIGIOUS SPHERE; PRIOR TO ‘THE GREAT BATTLE’; THE CHRISTIAN BEHAVIOUR OF ÆTHELSTAN; THE FYLDE: THE PLAIN OF DEATH; THE ‘PATHS OF THE DEAD’; GENEALOGICAL EVIDENCE - Jarl Gunnar Hlífrsson’s family relationship with Thorsteinn Egilsson; MARITIME AND LANDSCAPE SUMMARY IN THE BRÚNANBURH MSS.; APPENDIX A - Christian Relationships in Iceland and England; CHRONOLOGY; BIBLIOGRAPHY

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran are adherents of the last surviving Gnostic tradition from the period of Late Antiquity, and the Book of Kings is the capstone to one of their most sacred scriptures. A universal history in four parts, it concisely outlines the entire 480,000 year span of the material world, from its creation to its destruction in the maw of the great Leviathan, with details including a succession of antediluvian cataclysms that have previously wiped out all human life, the reigns of the kings who have reigned over humanity and are still yet to reign, a lament on the end of pagan antiquity under the reign of the Arabs, and the apocalyptic drama attending those who have the misfortune to live at the end of the world era. For the first time ever, this work appears in English in its entirety, complete and unabridged, and directly translated from original Mandaic manuscripts, with the events mentioned within it coordinated with our calendar. It also includes an extensive commentary illustrating its relationship to contemporary historical writing and with the sacred literature of Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians, Muslims, and other neighbouring religious communities living under Sasanian rule.Trade Review‘[The book] offers interesting insights into a Middle Eastern community during the era of the Byzantine and Sasanid empires. It is useful for those wanting to compare religious beliefs between cultures.’ Medievalists.net

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Council of Constantinople of 869-70 was highly dramatic, with its trial and condemnation of Patriarch Photius, a towering figure in the Byzantium of his day, and the tussle of wills at the council between the papal legates, the imperial representatives and the bishops. It was church politics and personalities rather than issues of doctrine, such as icon veneration, that dominated the debates. Out of all the acts of the great early councils, the acts of this council, of which this edition is the first modern translation, are the nearest to an accurate and complete record. Its protest against secular interference in ecclesiastical elections was taken up later in the West and led to this council’s being accorded full ecumenical status, although it had been repudiated in Byzantium soon after it was held. No early council expresses so vividly the tension between Rome’s claim to supreme authority and the Byzantine reduction of this to a primacy of honour.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe later Middle Ages in Europe c.1150–c.1500 can be viewed as an extensive scientific laboratory, with scholars and other writers producing texts that sought to define and redefine the human body – in relation to its daily work and environment, and in relation to God. This volume draws on written and visual evidence from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, placing gender at the centre of its enquiries, addressing the relationship between the human and the ‘natural’ (including the non-human) at a time when new worlds, new texts and new religious experiences were reshaping the individual and collective relationship with the cosmos, and challenging as well as reinforcing established hierarchies.Table of ContentsForeword Laura Kalas 1. Introduction: Considering Nature Patricia Skinner and Theresa L. Tyers WOMEN’S SPACES 2. Intersections of [Un]Nature, Power, and [Dis]Order: The Presentation of Elite Women in Medieval Chronicles Linda E. Mitchell 3. Gendering Treatment: Cupping by Female Practitioners in Late Medieval Visual Culture Jennifer Borland 4. Fracturing Boundaries: Domesticity and Agriculture Practices in a LateFourteenth Century Manuscript Theresa L. Tyers 5. Distilling Nature: Raw Materials, ‘Artificial’ Remedies and the Human Body in the Later Middle Ages Elma Brenner QUEER BODIES 6. Recreating the ‘Natural World’: The Medieval Oyster and her Pearl Diane Heath 7. Amazed and Ravished in the Medieval Garden: The Space of Lesbian Desire in The Assembly of Ladies and The Floure and the Leafe Michelle M. Sauer 8. Monstrous Hybrids, Maternal Sin, and the Concept of Species in Nicole Oresme’s De causis mirabilium Tess Wingard BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CITED

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe first ever translation of the whole of the rich and compelling body of tales contained in Chrétien's poem and its four Continuations. The mysterious and haunting Grail makes its first appearance in literature in Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval at the end of the twelfth century. But Chrétien never finished his poem, leaving an unresolved story and an incomplete picture of the Grail. It was, however, far too attractive an idea to leave. Not only did it inspire quite separate works; his own unfinished poem was continued and finally completed by no fewer than four other writers. The Complete Story of the Grail is the first ever translation of the whole of the rich and compelling body of tales contained in Chrétien's poem and its four Continuations, which are finally attracting the scholarly attention they deserve. Besides Chrétien's original text, there are the anonymous First Continuation (translated here in its fullest version), the Second Continuation attributed to Wauchier de Denain, and the intriguing Third and Fourth Continuations - probably written simultaneously, with no knowledge of each other's work - by Manessier and Gerbert de Montreuil. Two other poets were drawn to create preludes explaining the background to Chrétien's story, and translated here also are their works: The Elucidation Prologue and Bliocadran. Only in this, The Story of the Grail's complete form, can the reader appreciate the narrative skill and invention of the medieval poets and their surprising responses to Chrétien's theme - not least their crucial focus on the knight as a crusader. Equally, Chrétien's original poem was almost always copied in conjunction withone or more of the Continuations, so this translation represents how most medieval readers would have encountered it. Nigel Bryant's previous translations from Medieval French include Perlesvaus - the High Bookof the Grail, Robert de Boron's trilogy Merlin and the Grail, the Medieval Romance of Alexander, The True Chronicles of Jean le Bel and Perceforest.Trade ReviewBryant's translations are very readable. * FABULA *This fine edition of the Grail story surrenders many treasures to a close read. Bryant capsulizes the seminal Chrétien version and the continuations in the introductory section, providing a helpful guide through the nearly six hundred pages that follow. * COMITATUS *Nigel Bryant's translation is highly reliable, engaging, and as lively as he can make it (his stint as Head of Drama at Marlborough College has served him well). . . . This new and Complete Story of the Grail offers a fresh translation with complete texts for all four continuations, as well as two prequels, along with more supporting apparatus to guide a twenty-first-century public. * THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW *This book makes a significant contribution to Arthurian studies. . . . Bryant should again be commended for his ability to bring that which was distant closer and make it just as compelling. Highly recommended. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chrétien de Troyes: Perceval The First Continuation The Second Continuation Gerbert's Continuation The Third Continuation Appendix 1: The Elucidation Prologue Appendix 2: Bliocadran Appendix 3: Independent conclusion to the Second Continuation in the Bern manuscript [Burgerbibliothek 113]

Read more less

Book SynopsisEssays bringing out the richness and vibrancy of pre-modern textual culture in all its variety. Linne R. Mooney, Emeritus Professor of Palaeography at the University of York, has significantly advanced the study of later medieval English book production, particularly our knowledge of individual scribes; this collection honours her distinguished scholarship and responds to her wide-ranging research on Middle English manuscripts and texts. The thirteen essays brought together here take a variety of approaches - palaeographical, codicological, dialectal, textual, art historical - to the study of the English medieval book and to the varied environments (professional, administrative, mercantile, ecclesiastical) where manuscripts were produced and used during the period 1300-1550. Acknowledging that books and readers are no respecters of borders, this collection's geographical scope extends beyond England in the east to Ghent and Flanders, and in the west to Waterford and the Dublin Pale. Contributors explore manuscripts containing works by key writers, including Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, John Wyclif, and Walter Hilton. Major texts whose manuscript traditions are scrutinized include Speculum Vitae, the Scale of Perfection, the Canterbury Tales, and Confessio Amantis, along with a wide range of shorter works such as lyric poems, devotional texts, and historical chronicles. London book-making activities and the scribal cultures of other cities and monastic centres all receive attention, as does the book production of personal miscellanies. By considering both literary texts and the letters, charters, and writs that medieval scribes produced, in Latin and Anglo-French as well as English, this collection celebrates Professor Mooney's influence on the field and presents a holistic sense of England's pre-modern textual culture.Table of ContentsIntroduction -- Margaret Connolly I: International Perspectives How English is it? -- Martha W. Driver Middle Hiberno-English Poetry and the Nascent Bureaucratic Literary Culture of Ireland -- Kathryn Kerby-Fulton II: Identities and Localities Famous Scribe, Unrecognised Stint -- Ralph Hanna The Handwriting of Fifteenth-Century Signet Clerks and the King's French Secretaries -- Sebastian Sobecki Seeking Scribal Communities in Medieval London -- Estelle V. Stubbs Scribes and Booklets: The 'Trinity Anthologies' Reconsidered -- Holly James-Maddocks III: Scribal Production Some Codicological Observations on Manuscripts of Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection -- Michael G. Sargent The First Emergence of the Ricardian Confessio: Morgan 690 -- Joel Fredell The Anonymous 'Kings of England' and the Significance of its Material Form -- Margaret Connolly John Benet, Scribe and Compiler, and Dublin, Trinity College, MS 516 -- Wendy Scase The Founders' Book of Tewkesbury Abbey (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Top. Glouc. D. 2): Scripts and Transcripts --Susan Powell IV: Chaucerian ContextsWhen is a 'Canterbury Tales Manuscript' not Just a Canterbury Tales Manuscript? -- Daniel W. Mosser Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.15 and the Circulation of Chaucerian Manuscripts in the Sixteenth Century -- Simon Horobin Afterword: A Personal Tribute -- Derek Pearsall Linne R. Mooney: List of Publications -- Daryl Green

Read more less

Book SynopsisNew approaches to this most fluid of medieval genres, considering in particular its reception and transmission. Romance was the most popular secular literature of the Middle Ages, and has been understood most productively as a genre that continually refashioned itself. The essays collected in this volume explore the subject of translation, both linguistic and cultural, in relation to the composition, reception, and dissemination of romance across the languages of late medieval Britain, Ireland, and Iceland. In taking this multilingual approach, this volume proposes a re-centring, and extension, of our understanding of the corpus of medieval Insular romance, which although long considered extra-canonical, has over the previous decades acquired something approaching its own canon - a canon which we might now begin to unsettle, and of which we might ask new questions. The topics of the essays gathered here range from Dafydd ap Gwilym and Walter Map to Melusine and English Trojan narratives, and address topics from women and merchants to werewolves and marvels. Together, they position the study of romance in translation in relation to cross-border and cross-linguistic transmission and reception; and alongside the generic re-imaginings of romance, both early and late, that implicate romance in new linguistic, cultural, and social networks. The volume also shows how, even where linguistic translation is not involved, we can understand the ways in which romance moved across cultural and social boundaries and incorporated elements of different genres into its own capacious and malleable frame as types of translatio - in terms of learning, or power, or both.Table of ContentsList of Contributors List of Abbreviations Introduction: Insular Romance in Translation: New Approaches Victoria Flood and Megan G. Leitch 1. Romantic Wales: Imagining Wales in Medieval Insular Romance Helen Fulton 2. 'Something remains which is not open to my understanding': Enigmatic Marvels in Welsh Otherworld Narratives and Latin Arthurian Romance Jessica J. Lockhart 3. The Supernatural Company in Cultural Translation: Dafydd ap Gwilym and the Roman De La Rose Tradition Victoria Flood 4. Women and Werewolves: William of Palerne in Three Cultures Helen Cooper 5. 'Better a valiant squire than a cowardly knight': Gender in Guruns strengleikr (The Lay of Gurun) Carl Phelpstead 6. 'Vinegar upon Nitre'? Walter Map's Romance of 'Sadius and Galo' Neil Cartlidge 7. The Three Barriers to Closure in Hue de Rotelande's Ipomedon and the Middle English Translations Rebecca Newby 8. Trojan Trash? The Seege or Batayle of Troye and the Learning of 'Popular' Romance Venetia Bridges 9. Poaching Romance: Fan Fiction Theory and Shared Medieval Narratives Cory James Rushton 10. Between Epic and Romance: The Matter of England and the Chansons de Geste Aisling Byrne 11. Geographies of Loss: Cilician Armenia and the Prose Romance of Melusine Jan Shaw 12. 'All this will not comfort me': Romancing the Ballad in The Squire of Low Degree Laura Ashe 13. Merchants in Shining Armour: Chivalrous Interventions and Social Mobility in Late Middle English Romance Megan G. Leitch Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe ludic element of drama in the Middle Ages - or drama with early subject matter - is here to the fore. Medieval English Theatre is the premier journal in early theatre studies. Its name belies its wide range of interest: it publishes articles on theatre and pageantry from across the British Isles up to the opening of the London playhouses and the suppression of the civic mystery cycles, and also includes contributions on European and Latin drama, together with analyses of modern survivals or equivalents, and of research productions of medieval plays. This edition combines, perhaps unexpectedly, royalty and games. Games of all kinds, from jousting and "Christmas games" to those usually associated with children, are shown, it is suggested, to be more than they at first appear. Apparently run-of-the-mill entertainments, when presented to the court by the Londoners, by the court to a visiting emperor , or by the retainers of royalty and nobility to the general public for commercial gain, turn out to have unexpected political resonances; while the potential underlying sadism of children's games gains a horrific immediacy when diverted to the torturing of Christ. Even today, the musical SIX says a great deal more about royalty and role-playing than initially might appear, especially when set against eye-witness accounts of the first meeting of Anna of Cleves with Henry VIII, and what modern novelists have made of it . In the process we learn a great deal more about the detail of these games, from the maskerie costumes of James VI and Anna of Denmark to the elaborate fantasy challenges of the jousters in 1400/1401, which incidentally suggest that fourteenth-century court culture, whose language was Anglo-French, is a major missing link in the history of what is usually treated as purely English literature. Contributors: Philip Bennett, Philip Butterworth, Sarah Carpenter, Elisabeth Dutton, James Forse, Gordon Kipling, Michael Pearce, Meg Twycross.Table of ContentsThe Prince of Peace and the Mummers: Richard II and the Londoners' Visit of 1376/1377 - Meg Twycross Chivalric Entertainment at the Court of Henry IV: The Jousting Letters of 1401 - Sarah Carpenter Appendix (Meg Twycross and Philip Bennett): Transcription and Translation of BL MS Cotton Nero D II fols 260v-262r 'Maskerye claythis' for James VI and Anna of Denmark - Michael Pearce Peers and Performers in the Reign of Henry VI - James H. Forse 'That Gam Me Thoght Was Good!': Structuring Games into Medieval English Plays - Philip Butterworth Feminism, Theatre, and Historical Fiction: Anna of Cleves in 2021 - Elisabeth Dutton

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn examination of the depiction and representation of performative acts in Old English texts. Acts of performance, such as music, storytelling, and poetry recital, have made significant contributions to the rediscovery and widening popularity of Old English poetry. However, while these performances capture the imagination, they also influence an audience's view of the world of the original poems, even to propagating certain assumptions, particularly those to do with performance practices. By stripping away these assumptions, this book aims to uncover the ways in which representations of performance in Old English poetry are intimately associated with poetic production and fundamental cultural concerns. Through an examination of Beowulf, diverse wisdom poems, and the "artist" poems Deor and Widsith, it proposes that poets constructed an imaginary domain of "poetic performance", which negotiated tensions between early medieval creativity and core social beliefs. It also shows how the poems' relationship with oral methods of composition and circulation weakened in later medieval poetry as both language and poetic form altered. Overall, the book explores what depictions of performance within these texts can tell us about early medieval conceptualisations, processes, and practices, in the poetic imagination and in wider culture. Through an analysis of Eddic poetry and Laȝamon's Brut, it also highlights a tradition of "poetic performance" in English poetics.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Realising the Intangible 1 Instruments of the Poet: Exploiting the Old English Lexis 2 Multiformity and the Orality of Associative, Architectonic Poetics 3 Providence and Pleasure: Performance as Symbol 4 Storytelling in Beowulf and Meta-storytelling in Andreas 5 Wisdom and Power: Philosophies of Performance 6 Theme Songs: An English Tradition of Performance? 7 The Lure of the Lyre: Interpretation, Reenactment, and the Corpus Conclusion: 'Poetic Performance'

Read more less

Book SynopsisInitiates a wider development of inquiries into women's literary cultures to move the reader beyond single geographical, linguistic, cultural and period boundaries. Since the closing decades of the twentieth century, medieval women's writing has been the subject of energetic conversation and debate. This interest, however, has focused predominantly on western European writers working within the Christian tradition: the Saxon visionaries, Mechthild of Hackeborn, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Gertrude the Great, for example, and, in England, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe are cases in point. While this present book acknowledges the huge importance of such writers to women's literary history, it also argues that they should no longer be read solely within a local context. Instead, by putting them into conversation with other literary women and their cultures from wider geographical regions and global cultures - women from eastern Europe and their books, dramas and music; the Welsh gwraig llwyn a pherth (woman of bush and brake); the Indian mystic, Mirabai; Japanese women writers from the Heian period; women saints from across Christian Europe and those of eleventh-century Islam or late medieval Ethiopia; for instance - much more is to be gained in terms of our understanding of the drivers behind and expressions of medieval women's literary activities in far broader contexts. This volume considers the dialogue, synergies, contracts and resonances emerging from such new alignments, and to help a wider, multidirectional development of this enquiry into women's literary cultures.Table of ContentsForeword Diane Watt Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction: Medieval Women's Literary Cultures and Thinking Beyond the Local Liz Herbert McAvoy and Sue Niebrzydowski PART 1: Comparison and Dialogue 1. Speaking Across the Stars: Parallel Affective Communities in Islamic and Christian Hagiography Ayoush Lazikani 2. Women's Mystical Friendships: Margery Kempe and Mirabai Alexandra Verini 3. Women's Writing in the Japanese Heian Period: A Medieval Dialogue between the East and West Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa PART 2: Constructing Gender and Genre 4. The Genre of the Late Medieval Personalised Orthodox Slavic Women's Miscellany: Three 'Existential' Questions Michel de Dobbeleer 5. The Role of Kisaeng Sijo Poets in Medieval Korean Literature Ko Jeong-hee and Justin M. Byron-Davies 6. Rabi'a al-'Adawiyya: Gender, Authority and Paradox in Attar's Tadhkirat al-'awliya and the Mantiq al-tayr Shazia Jagot 7. Deception, Infanticide, and the Making of a Female Saint: A Look at the Gädl Krəstos Śämra Meron T. Gebreananaye PART 3: Saintly Performance and Marian Piety 8. 'Of our Lady thassumpcion': A European Context for the Worshipful Wives of Chester and their Marian Play Sue Niebrzydowski 9. Mary and Elizabeth: Male Perspectives of Female-Coded Piety in Offices for the Visitation Rhianydd Hallas 10. Speaking Internationally in Female Communities on the Eastern Borders of Medieval Europe Renáta Modráková 11. Textual Phantoms and Spectral Presences: The Coming to Rest of Mechthild of Hackeborn's Writing in the Late Middle Ages Liz Herbert McAvoy 12. Negotiating the Abject and the Sublime: The Centrality of Discourse Communities within Women's Mystical Experience Kathryn Loveridge PART 4: Evidence and the Archives: Revisiting and Reconsidering 13. 'Ic þæt secgan mæg': Women, Song, Story, Presence Elaine Treharne 14. In the Undergrowth: Llwyn a Pherth and Sexual Deviancy in Medieval Wales Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan and Sara Elin Roberts 15. 'I shall send yw money to by such stufe as I wull haue': The Paston Shoppers Vicki Kay Price Afterword: Intersectionality and Coalitions Jonathan Hsy List of Contributors Bibliography

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn exploration of the many depictions of Charlemagne in the Italian tradition of chivalric narratives in verse and prose. Chivalric tales and narratives concerning Charlemagne were composed and circulated in Italy from the early fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth century (and indeed subsequently flourished in forms of popular theatre which continue today). But are they history or fiction? Myth or fact? Cultural memory or deliberate appropriation? Elite culture or popular entertainment? Oral or written, performed or read? Beginning in the age of Dante with the earliest tales composed for Italians in the hybrid language of Franco-Italian, which draw inspiration from the French tradition of Charlemagne narratives, the volume considers the compositions of anonymous reciters of cantari and the prose versions of the Florentine Andrea da Barberino, before discussing the major literary contributions to the genre by Luigi Pulci, Matteo Maria Boiardo and Ludovico Ariosto. The focus throughout is on the ways in which the portrait of Charlemagne, seen as both Emperor and King of France, is persistently ambiguous, affected by the contemporary political situation and historical events such as invasion and warfare. He emerges through these texts in myriad guises, from positive and admirable to negative and despised.Table of ContentsList of Illustrations List of contributors General Preface: Charlemagne: A European Icon - Marianne Ailes and Philip E. Bennett Acknowledgements Abbreviations and A Note on Terminology Introduction - Jane E. Everson 1.The First Franco-Italian Vernacular Textual Witnesses of the Charlemagne Epic Tradition in the Italian Peninsula: Hybrid Forms - Claudia Boscolo and Leslie Zarker Morgan 2.The Italian cantari on Charlemagne - Franca Strologo 3.Carlo Magno, Ideal Progenitor of Country and Lineage: The image of Charlemagne in the prose compilations of Andrea da Barberino - Leslie Zarker Morgan 4.Tradition and innovation in the fifteenth century: from anonymous poems to Luigi Pulci's Morgante - Annalisa Perrotta 5.Matteo Maria Boiardo: Inamoramento de Orlando - Maria Pavlova 6.Crisis and continuity at the turn of the century - Jane E. Everson 7.From Emperor to Pawn. Charlemagne in the Orlando Furioso - Stefano Jossa 8.An undying tradition: the afterlife of Charlemagne in Italy - Luca Degl'Innocenti Afterword: Charlemagne in Italy: a never-ending story - Jane E. Everson Bibliography Index of Proper Names

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn interdisciplinary and trans-historical investigation of the representation of ethics in Arthurian Literature. From its earliest days, the Arthurian legend has been preoccupied with questions of good kingship, the behaviours of a ruling class, and their effects on communities, societies, and nations, both locally and in imperial and colonizing contexts. Ethical considerations inform and are informed by local anxieties tied to questions of power and identity, especially where leadership, service, and governance are concerned; they provide a framework for understanding how the texts operate as didactic and critical tools of these subjects. This book brings together chapters drawing on English, Welsh, German, Dutch, French, and Norse iterations of the Arthurian legend, and bridging premodern and modern temporalities, to investigate the representation of ethics in Arthurian literature across interdisciplinary and transhistorical lines. They engage a variety of methodologies, including gender, critical race theory, philology, literature and the law, translation theory, game studies, comparative, critical, and close reading, and modern editorial and authorial practices. Texts interrogated range from Culhwch and Olwen to Parzival, Roman van Walewein, Tristrams Saga, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Malory's Morte Darthur. As a whole, the approaches and findings in this volume attest to the continued value and importance of the Arthurian legend and its scholarship as a vibrant field through which to locate and understand the many ways in which medieval literature continues to inform modern sensibilities and institutions, particularly where the matter of ethics is concerned.Table of ContentsForeword - Jane Gilbert Acknowledgements "Introduction" - Melissa Ridley Elmes and Evelyn Meyer Arthurian Ethics before the Pentecostal Oath: In Search of Ethical Origins in Culhwch and Olwen - Melissa Ridley Elmes Too Quickly or Not Quickly Enough, Too Rash and Too Harshly: The Arthurian Court's Lack of Ethics in Hartmann von Aue's Erec and Iwein and Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival - Evelyn Meyer The Ethics of Arthurian Marriage: Husband vs. Wife in Hartmann von Aue's Iwein - Jonathan Seelye Martin Arthurian Ethics and Ethical Reading in the Perlesvaus - Joseph Derosier Translation Praxis and the Ethical Value of Chivalry in the Caligula Brut - Christopher Jensen Imperial Ambitions and the Ethics of Power: Gender, Race, and the Riddarasögur - Nahir Otaño Gracia Lowland Ethics in the Arthur of the Dutch - David F. Johnson Contesting Royal Power: The Ethics of Good Lordship, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and the March of Wales - Steven Bruso 'As egir as any lyoun': The Ethics of Knight-Horse Relationships in Lybeaus Desconus - Caitlin G. Watt Malory's Ethical Dinadan: Moderate Masculinity in a Crisis of Hypermasculine Chivalry - Matthew D. O'Donnell Virtus, Vertues, and Gender: Cultivating a Chivalric Habitus in Thomas Malory's Tale of Sir Gareth - Holly A. Crocker Kingly Disguise and (Im)Perception in Three Fifteenth-Century English Romances - Mikayla Hunter 'Adventure? What is that?' Arthurian Ethics in/and the Games We Play" - Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand The Ethics of a New Edition of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur - and More Evidence for the Superiority of the Winchester Manuscript - † Fiona Tolhurst and K. S. Whetter The Ethics of Writing Guinevere in Modern Historical Fiction - Nicole Evelina Afterword - Elizabeth Archibald

Read more less

Book SynopsisHailed by Plato as the "Tenth Muse" of ancient Greek poetry, Sappho is inarguably antiquity's greatest lyric poet. Born over 2,600 years ago on the Greek island of Lesbos, and writing amorously of women and men alike, she is the namesake lesbian. What's left of her writing, and what we know of her, is fragmentary. Shrouded in mystery, she is nonetheless repeatedly translated and discussed - no, appropriated - by all. Sappho has most recently undergone a variety of treatments by agenda-driven scholars and so-called poet-translators with little or no knowledge of Greek. Classicist-translator Jeffrey Duban debunks the postmodernist scholarship by which Sappho is interpreted today and offers translations reflecting the charm and elegant simplicity of the originals. Duban provides a reader-friendly overview of Sappho's times and themes, exploring her eroticism and Greek homosexuality overall. He introduces us to Sappho's highly cultured island home, to its lyre-accompanied musical legends, and to the fabled beauty of Lesbian women. Not least, he emphasizes the proximity of Lesbos to Troy, making the translation and enjoyment of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey a further focus.More than anything else, argues Duban, it is free verse and its rampant legacy - and no two persons more than Walt Whitman and Ezra Pound - that bear responsibility for the ruin of today's classics in translation, to say nothing of poetry in the twentieth century. Beyond matters of reflection for classicists, Duban provides a far-ranging beginner's guide to classical literature, with forays into Spenser and Milton, and into the colonial impulse of Virgil, Spenser, and the West at large.Trade Review"A humanities degree between two covers. Brilliant." - David Dubal, The Juilliard SchoolTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Abbreviations Guide to Pronunciation Preface Part I. 1. Greek Lyric, Greek Epic, and Old Testament; the Quarrel of Ancients and Moderns 2. Greekless Translators, Theorizing Scholars 3. Selected Lyric Poets of Antiquity: Archilochus, Alcman, Anacreon & Ibycus 4. Sappho: Antiquity's Poetess and Ours 5. Sappho's Eroticism 6. The Loves of Men, Gods, and Primordial Forces 7. Lesbos, Troy, and Environs; the Principal Greek Genres and Dialects Part II. 8. Sappho and the "Lyric Nine," An Aesthetic for Lyric Translation 9. The Aesthetic of English-Language Prosody in the Translation of Classical Verse 10. Translatability: Achieving Charm and Distinction in Translation 11. Translation as the Profession of Ignorance: Mary Barnard, Willis Barnstone, and Others 12. Translations Compared Part III. Translations: sappho alcman anacreon archilochus ibycus Part IV. 13. Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid: The Epic Cycle in Progress 14. Cosmic Preservation and the Heroism of Heracles 15. Self-Perpetuation and the Heroism at Troy 16. Imperishable Fame and the Evolution of Greek Epic 17. Imperishable Fame Denied: Sappho's "Marriage of Hector and Andromache" 18. Cataclysm Averted: Homer's Separation of Helen and Achilles Part V. 19. Homeric and Sapphic Meter, Metric Formulae and Oral Composition, the Origins of Rhyming Poetry, Milton on Blank Verse 20. Accentuation, Sound, and Word Order in Ancient Greek Poetry Part VI. 21. Growing Latin from Greek Roots, Rome's Imperial Vision and Its Aftermath Part VII. Equal to the Gods: Poetic Sublimity, Inner Collapse Equal to a God: Form and Content in Convulsive Union Frenzied Emotion, Expressive Control: Form and Content Bound Modernism Wins Out: Form and Content Abandoned "Freedom, Freedom, Prison to the Free": The Obfuscatory Unfettered Sappho Unbound and Boundaryless- Theorized, Personalized, Politicized Boundaries, Artistic Fit, and What "Art" Means and Does Part VIII. Not Making It New (or Better): Recent Iliads and Aeneids So Old It's New (and Better): The Smith/Miller Hexametric Iliad On Leaving Well Enough Alone: Rejecting Lattimore for R. Fitzgerald Pope's Iliad and E. FitzGerald's Ruba iya t; Pope on Chapman's Iliad Versions and Perversions of Homer: R. Fitzgerald, Fagles, and Logue Ezra Pound: Damage to Sextus Propertius Addendum Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Egyptian judge and man of letters, Ibn Abi al-'Id al-Sakhawi al-Maliki, who lived in Cairo and Medina in the ninth/fifteenth century and who practised charity his whole life, compiled a work titled the Hilyat al-kurama', literally "The Ornament of the Magnanimous." On Generosity comprises an introductory study of this work and its author, the first reliable and critical edition of the Arabic text, an annotated English translation, and glossaries designed to make the text more accessible to non-specialists. In Arabic-Islamic culture, generosity is held in the very highest regard and descriptions of charity, hospitality and largesse are consequently an important component of Arabic literature. A significant example of a flourishing genre devoted to generosity and a testament to the intense cultural and literary activity of the author's time, the Hilyat al-kurama' includes aphorisms, poems, and anecdotes about benevolent individuals whose generosity is exemplified by the gifts and money they lavished on others and by the many ways they provided aid to the needy. The lively examples of the liberality exhibited by everyone, from rulers to ordinary people, are intended to urge others to similar acts of generosity, charity and assistance.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis study discusses the representation of class in poetry in English from Britain and Ireland between the fourteenth and twenty-first centuries, and the effect of class on the production, dissemination, and reception of that poetry. It looks at the factors which enable and obstruct the production of poetry, such as literacy, education, patronage, prejudice, print, and the various alleged revivals of poetry in Britain, and the relationship between class and poetic form. Whilst this is a survey that cannot be comprehensive, it offers a number of case-studies of poets and poems from each period considered.Table of Contents1. Introduction2. The Late Middle Ages3. The Early Modern Period4. The Eighteenth Century5. The Late Eighteenth to Early Nineteenth Century​6. The Mid- to Late Nineteenth Century7. The Twentieth Century: To the 1960s8. The Twentieth Century: After the 1960s

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book charts the evolution of Islamic dialectical theory (jadal) over a four-hundred year period. It includes an extensive study of the development of methods of disputation in Islamic theology (kalām) and jurisprudence (uṣūl al-fiqh) from the tenth through the fourteenth centuries. The author uses the theoretical writings of Islamic theologians, jurists, and philosophers to describe the conceptOverall, this investigation looks at the extent to which the development of Islamic modes of disputation is rooted in Aristotle and the classical tradition. The author reconstructs the contents of the earliest systematic treatment of the subject by b. al-Rīwandī. He then contrasts the theological understanding of dialectic with the teachings of the Arab Aristotelians–al-Fārābī, Avicenna, and Averroes. Next, the monograph shows how jurists took over the theological method of dialectic and applied it to problems peculiar to jurisprudence. Although the earliest writings on dialectic are fairly free of direct Aristotelian influence, there are coincidences of themes and treatment. But after jurisprudence had assimilated the techniques of theological dialectic, its own theory became increasingly influenced by logical terminology and techniques. At the end of the thirteenth century there arose a new discipline, the ādāb al-baḥth. While the theoretical underpinnings of the new system are Aristotelian, the terminology and order of debate place it firmly in the Islamic tradition of disputation.Trade Review“Very few unpublished PhD dissertations have had a formative influence on a field. One of the precious few is Larry Miller’s Princeton dissertation from 1984 on Islamic disputation theory. It proposed an original and compelling account of the development of the discipline, from the earliest extant Arabic works … to the composition of classic madrasa handbooks … . It … has served as the starting point for all later studies of Arabic/Islamic dialectics in European languages.” (Khaled El-Rouayheb, Journal of the History of Philosophy, Vol. 61 (3), July, 2023)Table of Contents1. Theological Dialectic (Jadal).- 2. Dialectic and Arabic Philosophy.- 3. Dialectic (Jadal) in Jurisprudence.- 4. The Ādāb Al-Baḥth.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book offers a comparative study of emotion in Arabic Islamic and English Christian contemplative texts, c. 1110-1250, contributing to the emerging interest in ‘globalization’ in medieval studies. A.S.Lazikani argues for the necessity of placing medieval English devotional texts in a more global context and seeks to modify influential narratives on the ‘history of emotions’ to enable this more wide-ranging critical outlook. Across eight chapters, the book examines the dialogic encounters generated by comparative readings of Muhyddin Ibn ‘Arabi (1165-1240), ‘Umar Ibn al-Fārid (1181-1235), Abu al-Hasan al-Shushtarī (d. 1269), Ancrene Wisse (c. 1225), and the Wooing Group (c. 1225). Investigating the two-fold ‘paradigms of love’ in the figure of Jesus and in the image of the heart, the (dis)embodied language of affect, and the affective semiotics of absence and secrecy, Lazikani demonstrates an interconnection between the religious traditions of early Christianity and Islam. Table of Contents

Read more less

Book SynopsisWriting Plague: Language and Violence from the Black Death to COVID-19 brings a holistic and comparative perspective to “plague writing” from the later Middle Ages to the twenty-first century. It argues that while the human “hardware” has changed enormously between the medieval past and the present (urbanization, technology, mass warfare, and advances in medical science), the human “software” (emotional and psychological reactions to the shock of pandemic) has remained remarkably similar across time. Through close readings of works by medieval writers like Guillaume de Machaut, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Geoffrey Chaucer in the fourteenth century, select plays by Shakespeare, and modern “plague” fiction and film, Alfred Thomas convincingly demonstrates psychological continuities between the Black Death and COVID-19. In showing how in times of plague human beings repress their fears and fantasies and displace them onto the threatening “other,” Thomas highlights the danger of scapegoating vulnerable minority groups such as Asian Americans and Jews in today’s America. This wide-ranging study will thus be of interest not only to medievalists but also to students of modernity as well as the general reader.Table of Contents1. Introduction: Language and Violence from the Black Death to COVID-19.2. The Pardoner, the Prioress, and the Pandemic: Jews and Other Scapegoats in Fourteenth-Century European Culture.3. Death and the Maiden: Mourning and Melancholy in Pearl and the Late Medieval European Elegy.4. The Plague’s The Thing: Pandemic and Religious Politics in Shakespeare’s Drama.5. The Brown Plague and the White Sickness: Fascism and the Crisis of Democracy in Twentieth-Century Plague Fiction and Film.6. Conclusion.

Read more less

Book SynopsisEnglish Women’s Spiritual Utopias, 1400-1700: New Kingdoms of Womanhood uncovers a tradition of women’s utopianism that extends back to medieval women’s monasticism, overturning accounts of utopia that trace its origins solely to Thomas More. As enclosed spaces in which women wielded authority that was unavailable to them in the outside world, medieval and early modern convents were self-consciously engaged in reworking pre-existing cultural heritage to project desired proto-feminist futures. The utopianism developed within the English convent percolated outwards to unenclosed women's spiritual communities such as Mary Ward's Institute of the Blessed Virgin and the Ferrar family at Little Gidding. Convent-based utopianism further acted as an unrecognized influence on the first English women’s literary utopias by authors such as Margaret Cavendish and Mary Astell. Collectively, these female communities forged a mode of utopia that drew on the past to imagine new possibilities for themselves as well as for their larger religious and political communities. Tracking utopianism from the convent to the literary page over a period of 300 years, New Kingdoms writes a new history of medieval and early modern women’s intellectual work and expands the concept of utopia itself.Table of ContentsChapter 1: Mirrors of our Lady: Utopia in the Medieval Convent.- Chapter 2: These Most Afflicted Sisters: Old and New Futures in Exiled English Convents.- Chapter 3: Not Yet: Aspirational Women’s Communities Beyond the Convent.- Chapter 4: Convents of Pleasure: English Women’s Literary Utopias.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn recent decades the concept of Mediterranean has been cited with increasing frequency in relation to the study of medieval literatures. And yet, in what sense would Dante’s Comedy be ‘Mediterranean’? Is it because of its Greek-Arabic and Islamic sources? Dante and the Mediterranean Comedy analyzes the ideological function of references to the sea in the study of the Comedy undertaken by Enrico Cerulli, a scholar of Somali-Ethiopian languages, and a colonial governor of ‘Italian East Africa.’ Then it presents novel lines of inquiry on the reception and appropriation of the poem, such as the presence of Islamic sources in early commentaries of the Comedy, and cross-cultural allusions to Dante’s Hell in some graffiti on the walls of the Spanish Inquisition prison in Palermo. The image of the Mediterranean that seeps through the poem and through the history of its circulation is vivid yet hardly idyllic.Table of Contents1 Introduction: A Mediterranean ComedyPart I History of Criticism 2 A Post-Colonial Comedy: Enrico Cerulli on Dante 3 Beyond Good and Evil? More on Cerulli and Italian Orientalism Part II Exercises in Criticism 4 Exposing Maometto’s Contrapasso: The Arabic Sources from Spain and the Early Commentators on the Commedia 5 A Transreligious Hell: Dante in the Prisons of the Inquisition in Palermo 6 The City Lament: Mediterranean Microecologies of Courtly Love 7 Conclusion: A Sea of Differences

Read more less

Book Synopsis The philosopher Epictetus’ Encheiridion (“Little Handbook”), written c. AD 100, is one of the most influential works of Stoic philosophy. The Greek text presented here is the first one to be based an a full evaluation of the complete tradition.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisA follow-up publication to the Handbook of Medieval Studies, this new reference work turns to a different focus: medieval culture. Medieval research has grown tremendously in depth and breadth over the last decades. Particularly our understanding of medieval culture, of the basic living conditions, and the specific value system prevalent at that time has considerably expanded, to a point where we are in danger of no longer seeing the proverbial forest for the trees. The present, innovative handbook offers compact articles on essential topics, ideals, specific knowledge, and concepts defining the medieval world as comprehensively as possible. The topics covered in this new handbook pertain to issues such as love and marriage, belief in God, hell, and the devil, education, lordship and servitude, Christianity versus Judaism and Islam, health, medicine, the rural world, the rise of the urban class, travel, roads and bridges, entertainment, games, and sport activities, numbers, measuring, the education system, the papacy, saints, the senses, death, and money.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe volume discusses the world as it was known in the Medieval and Early Modern periods, focusing on projects concerned with mapping as a conceptual and artistic practice, with visual representations of space, and with destinations of real and fictive travel. Maps were often taken as straightforward, objective configurations. However, they expose deeply subjective frameworks with social, political, and economic significance. Travel narratives, whether illustrated or not, can address similar frameworks. Whereas travelled space is often adventurous, and speaking of hardship, strange encounters and danger, city portraits tell a tale of civilized life and civic pride. The book seeks to address the multiple ways in which maps and travel literature conceive of the world, communicate a 'Weltbild', depict space, and/or define knowledge. The volume challenges academic boundaries in the study of cartography by exploring the links between mapmaking and artistic practices. The contributions discuss individual mapmakers, authors of travelogues, mapmaking as an artistic practice, the relationship between travel literature and mapmaking, illustration in travel literature, and imagination in depictions of newly explored worlds.

Read more less