Literary studies: ancient, classical Books

Book SynopsisLiterary and cultural historians typically cite Thomas More''s 1516 Utopia as the source of both a genre and a concept. Karma Lochrie rejects this origin myth of utopianism along with the assumption that people in the Middle Ages were incapable of such thinking. In Nowhere in the Middle Ages, Lochrie reframes the terms of the discussion by revealing how utopian thought was, in fact, somewhere in the Middle Ages. In the process, she transforms conventional readings of More''s Utopia and challenges the very practice of literary history today.Drawing on a range of contemporary scholarship on utopianism and a broad premodern archive, Lochrie charts variant utopian strains in medieval literature and philosophy that diverge from More''s work and at the same time plot uncanny connections with it. Examining works such as Macrobius''s fifth-century Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, Mandeville''s Travels, and William Langland''s Piers Plowman, Trade Review"Nowhere in the Middle Ages is an ambitious project, wide-ranging in its scope and developing a complex and original argument. There are no other books that do the kind of work on medieval utopian thinking that Karma Lochrie does here." * Steven Kruger, Queens College and the Graduate Center, CUNY *"Karma Lochrie issues a necessary provocation to productive rethinking. Serious and persuasive, Nowhere in the Middle Ages shakes Anglo-American literary scholarship from its critical slumber with respect to utopian thought, traditions, and texts." * Iain Macleod Higgins, University of Victoria *Table of ContentsIntroduction. No Past Chapter 1. Nowhere Earth: Macrobius's Commentary on the Dream of Scipio and Kepler's Somnium Chapter 2. Somewhere in the Middle Ages: The Land of Cokaygne, Then and Now Chapter 3. Provincializing Medieval Europe: Mandeville's Cosmopolitan Utopianism Chapter 4. "Something Is Missing": Utopian Failure, Piers Plowman, and The Dream of John Ball Chapter 5. Reading Forward: More's Utopia Unmoored Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisThe Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman, Volume 2, by Ralph Hanna, deliberately addresses the question of the poem's perceived "difficulty," by indicating the legitimate areas of unresolved dilemmas, while offering often original explanations of a variety of textual loci.Trade Review"Of all the poems of the English Middle Ages, Piers Plowman is the one that most deserves and needs annotation of the fullest and best possible kind, both because it is a text of unrivaled literary quality and interest, and because it is characteristically knotty and deploys a language of unusual richness, density, and allusiveness. Much of this allusiveness is to areas of learning that are not at every modern reader's fingertips. A particular difficulty is the existence of the poem in three authorial versions of almost desperate complexity. It will be an immense triumph to have a commentary which elucidates their relationships as a matter of policy and not simply as the result of conflating annotation on the different versions." * Derek Pearsall *

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Book SynopsisThe Knight, the Cross, and the Song offers a new perspective on the driving forces of crusading in the period 1100-1400. Although religious devotion has long been identified as the primary motivation of those who took the cross, Stefan Vander Elst argues that it was by no means the only focus of the texts written to convince the warriors of Western Christianity to participate in the holy war. Vander Elst examines how, across three centuries, historiographical works that served as exhortations for the Crusade sought specifically to appeal to aristocratic interests beyond piety. They did so by appropriating the formal and thematic characteristics of literary genres favored by the knightly class, the chansons de geste and chivalric romance. By using the structure, commonplaces, and traditions of chivalric literature, propagandists associated the Crusade with the decidedly secular matters to which arms-bearers were drawn. This allowed them to introduce the mutual obTrade Review"The Knight, the Cross, and the Song cleverly illustrates how, from the early flowerings of of the chivalric age to the late fourteenth century, across northern France to the Near East, a burst of historical writing and storytelling was created to appeal specifically to the aristocratic interests of the knightly class and convince them to take up the cross." * Times Literary Supplement *"[A] carefully researched study, providing a wealth of useful material and some much needed discussion of neglected texts. The enduring and elusive appeal of crusading ideals will continue to preoccupy scholars in years to come." * Modern Philology *"Stefan Vander Elst offers valuable insights into how Crusade narratives were composed and how they may have been received by medieval audiences. His discussion of the influence of imaginative literature on what is now regarded as factual literature is illuminating." * Helen J. Nicholson, Cardiff University *

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Book SynopsisIn The Virgin in Song, Thomas Arentzen explores the characterization of Mary in the songs of Romanos the Melodist, one of the greatest liturgical poets of Byzantium. Romanos's hymns shaped a figure, Arentzen argues, who related intimately to her flock in a formative period of Christian orthodoxy.Trade Review"Few interpreters demonstrate such refined poetic sensibilities as Thomas Arentzen does in his reading of Romanos's songs. His engaging-at times, daring-analysis exposes the paradox of portraying Mary as both an erotic virgin and an exemplar for connecting to Christ." * Georgia A. Frank, Colgate University *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Donoghue does not shy away from asking the unanswerable questions, and his book is all the better for it . . . [He] engagingly and persuasively shows us that cognitive psychology has something to contribute to Old English prosody (and vice versa), and that not just Latin and Old Saxon but also medieval Arabic and modern Thai might change our perspective on Anglo-Saxon approaches to reading. Such a reappraisal of how the earliest texts in English were first experienced is a major contribution to the scholarship." * Times Literary Supplement *"By putting into productive dialogue what have until now remained largely discrete schools of thought within Anglo-Saxon studies, How the Anglo-Saxons Read Their Poems offers an important and compelling reading both of the complex, interlocking, and interdependent constellation of cultural forces and graphic practices out of which Old English poetry emerges and of the means by and the degree to which its first, intended readers were so ably equipped to read it." * Speculum *"A brilliant and daring achievement, one that ventures beyond most medievalists' scholarly experience." * John D. Niles, University of Wisconsin-Madison *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1. How to Read Chapter 2. From Orality to Punctuation Chapter 3. Verse Syntax Chapter 4. Eye Movement Less a Conclusion than an Opening Up Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisTrade Review""[A] volume that has earned a place on every Langland scholar's shelves, and will make an important contribution to future work on Piers Plowman."" * Speculum *"Of all the poems of the English Middle Ages, Piers Plowman is the one that most deserves and needs annotation of the fullest and best possible kind, both because it is a text of unrivaled literary quality and interest, and because it is characteristically knotty and deploys a language of unusual richness, density, and allusiveness. Much of this allusiveness is to areas of learning that are not at every modern reader's fingertips. A particular difficulty is the existence of the poem in three authorial versions of almost desperate complexity. It will be an immense triumph to have a commentary which elucidates their relationships as a matter of policy and not simply as the result of conflating annotation on the different versions." * Derek Pearsall *"The Penn Commentary series is not for first-time readers or undergraduates to purchase or to read directly, but it will serve as a reference work for teachers prepping class at any level and for advanced scholars pursuing new work on the poem. Lawler's 500-page volume, like the three already published, is a font of knowledge, critical, historical, literary, theological, and bibliographical." * The Medieval Review *Table of ContentsNote to the Reader Preface C Passus 15; B Passūs 13-14 C Passus 16; B Passūs 14-15 C Passus 17; B Passus 15 C Passus 18; B Passus 16 C Passus 19; B Passus 17 Works Cited Index Passages Cited

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Book SynopsisA constant feature of Jewish culture in the medieval Mediterranean was the dedication of panegyric texts in Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, and other languages to men of several ranks: scholars, communal leaders, courtiers, merchants, patrons, and poets. Although the imagery of nature and eroticism in the preludes to these poems is often studied, the substance of what follows is generally neglected, as it is perceived to be repetitive, obsequious, and less aesthetically interesting than other types of poetry from the period. In Dominion Built of Praise, Jonathan Decter demurs. As is the case with visual portraits, panegyrics operate according to a code of cultural norms that tell us at least as much about the society that produced them as the individuals they portray. Looking at the phenomenon of panegyric in Mediterranean Jewish culture from several overlapping perspectives—social, historical, ethical, poetic, political, and theological—he finds that they offer representatTrade Review"Dominion Built of Praise represents an original and comprehensive diachronic study of medieval Hebrew poetry of praise, how and why it was deployed, and what religious and literary intellectuals thought about it. Readers of medieval Hebrew literature and comparatists are indebted to Decter for inviting us to return to the panegyric as an artistically and conceptually complex cultural artifact and for opening important and fascinating new lines of inquiry into its discourse." * Speculum *"Decter has produced a valuable book which deepens our understanding of the phenomenon of praise poetry in the Jewish Mediterranean in every respect, in relation to power and authority within Jewish society and beyond. It is an excellently written book in which formal data and personal opinions are fully justified by original sources and relevant scholarly studies. It is a must for anyone who has questions about the meaning of the art of praise poetry in medieval times." * English Historical Review *"Decter’s book is the rigorous product of a fruitful and well-planned study of the genre of panegyrics. He offers a journey through the genre, focusing on key aspects, authors, and works to understand the differences across time and space. His superb knowledge of the medieval Islamic world allows the analysis to be conducted against the background of the Arabo-Islamic intellectual trends that inform and shed light on the development of the Hebrew cultural production. In addition, Decter manages to enrich the discussion by providing well-selected examples. There is no doubt that Dominion Built of Praise successfully fills the conspicuous gap in our knowledge of the panegyric genre within the history of Hebrew literature." * Religion & Literature *"Dominion Built of Praise is clear and surefooted, its historical contextualization deft, and its revisionism refreshing and never heavy-handed. Jonathan Decter has a profound and intimate knowledge of medieval Hebrew poems and other texts, many of them unpublished and all of them in some ways overlooked. Medieval Hebrew praise poetry has never been taken so seriously, and Decter demonstrates why it should be." * Marina Rustow, Princeton University *"Dominion Built of Praise represents a very important diachronic study of the relatively neglected genre of medieval Hebrew praise poetry. Customarily treated or dismissed as highly styled in form and thoroughly conventional in content, Hebrew panegyric in Jonathan Decter's highly skilled hands speaks directly and indirectly, through language and representation, to communal leadership, authority, and legitimacy. Thanks to Decter's wide-ranging perspective, Dominion Built of Praise extends beyond al-Andalus to mapping and analyzing Hebrew literary creativity in Christian Europe, Italy, and other Mediterranean lands." * Ross Brann, Cornell University *"Panegyric is both central to the medieval Jewish literary tradition and aesthetically challenging. Jonathan Decter explores how it operated within a politically dominion-less Jewish community and how it was used to negotiate between the Jewish community or its members and the ruling Muslim or Christian power. Drawing on original textual research in Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Judeo-Arabic, and Castilian, he has produced a study that contributes to all of those fields." * Suzanne Stetkevych, Georgetown University *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1. Performance Matters: Between Public Acclamation and Epistolary Exchange Chapter 2. Poetic Gifts: Maussian Exchange and the Working of Medieval Jewish Culture Chapter 3. "Humble Like the Humble One": The Language of Jewish Political Legitimacy Chapter 4. "Sefarad Boasts over Shinar": Mediterranean Regionalism in Jewish Panegyric Chapter 5. "A Word Aptly Spoken": The Ethics of Praise Chapter 6. "A Cedar Whose Stature in the Garden of Wisdom . . . ": Hyperbole, the Imaginary, and the Art of Magnification Chapter 7. In Praise of God, in Praise of Man: Issues in Political Theology Chapter 8. "May His Book Be Burnt Even Though It Contains Your Praise!": Jewish Panegyric in the Christian Mediterranean Chapter 9. The Other "Great Eagle": Interreligious Panegyrics and the Limits of Interpretation Afterword Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisBetween 1532 and 1602, the works of Geoffrey Chaucer were published in no less than six folio editions. These were, in fact, the largest books of poetry produced in sixteenth-century England, and they significantly shaped the perceptions of Chaucer that would hold sway for centuries to come. But it is the stories behind these editions that are the focus of Megan L. Cook's interest in The Poet and the Antiquaries. She explores how antiquarians-historians, lexicographers, religious polemicists, and other readers with a professional, but not necessarily literary, interest in the English past-played an indispensable role in making Chaucer a figure of lasting literary and cultural importance. After establishing the antiquarian involvement in the publication of the folio editions, Cook offers a series of case studies that discuss Chaucer and his works in relation to specific sixteenth-century discourses about the past. She turns to early accounts of Chaucer's biography to show how importanTrade Review"One of the achievements of [Cook's] book is that it outlines the chronology of the developing Chaucer tradition while managing at the same time to differentiate its various elements with telling reference to printed and manuscript sources . . . Cook's survey of the early centuries of Chaucer reception gives a powerful sense of the ways in which he was co-opted in various conceptualizations of nation, language, faith and history." * The Times Literary Supplement *"This book has much to recommend it. It offers a lively treatment of the history of Chaucer's folios through the beginning of the seventeenth century, and will be indispensible to those who work with the English reception of medieval works in the Tudor period. It also demonstrates the extensive reach of antiquarian communities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and suggests the existence of networks of textual exchange within England (and even outside of it) that were hitherto unguessed. Any scholar who deals with what Alice S. Miskimin famously called 'the Renaissance Chaucer' should have this book on their shelf." * Modern Philology *"[A] suggestive and sensitive book. It is also intensely readable in a way that does not compromise its rigor, as each chapter is written with a rare level of intellectual and stylistic fluency . . . Cook's central point [is] that 'Chaucer' is largely a product of specific audiences and their needs. As she demonstrates ably throughout this volume, the lingering idea of 'Chaucerian exceptionalism', and the 'untimeliness or temporal slipperiness' with which he is often credited, are conceptions that have their own histories, being leftover traces of his Tudor and Stuart readerships." * Journal of British Studies *"Considered in toto, Cook's book attractively illustrates how 'the medieval past is always shaped by its postmedieval interpreters.' She writes in a crisp, clear, and unpretentious style, which is easy to read. Her love of the specific shines through, driving analyses which are meticulous, copiously documented, and clearly structured. What Cook does is done superlatively well. Leaving one's audience asking for more is no bad thing." * Medium Ævum *"Elegantly written and meticulously documented, The Poet and the Antiquaries offers a genuinely new, original, and exciting intervention into the study of the reception, editorial, and reading history of Geoffrey Chaucer." * Siân Echard, University of British Columbia *"Megan L. Cook both synthesizes strands of current criticism and moves decisively beyond them. Bringing together book and manuscript history, reception studies, the history of the English language, detailed work on Chaucer as an authorial figure, and a sustained exploration of the developing editorial tradition and broader history of literary and cultural scholarship, she creates a fresh perspective on a very canonical figure's afterlife in a much-studied period." * Lucy Munro, King's College, London *

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Book SynopsisIf material bodies have inherent, animating powersor virtues, in the premodern sensethen those bodies typically and most insistently associated in the premodern period with matternamely, womencannot be inert and therefore incapable of ethical action, Holly Crocker contends. In The Matter of Virtue, Crocker argues that one idea of what it means to be humana conception of humanity that includes vulnerability, endurance, and openness to othersemerges when we consider virtue in relation to modes of ethical action available to premodern women. While a misogynistic tradition of virtue ethics, from antiquity to the early modern period, largely cast a skeptical or dismissive eye on women, Crocker seeks to explore what happened when poets thought about the material body not as a tool of an empowered agent whose cultural supremacy was guaranteed by prevailing social structures but rather as something fragile and open, subject but also connected to others. After an introduction that analyzes HaTrade Review"The Matter of Virtue is courageous, temperate, just, and discerning, and it is also constant, faithful, patient, and full of hope. Crocker orchestrates the cardinal virtues, their theological addenda, and their feminine supplements to compose a renewed virtue discourse sustained by feminist philosophy, literary studies, and the history of ideas. Crocker has produced a major work that persuasively demonstrates the affordances of virtue across medieval and early modern studies, with implications for how we study, teach, and work, as well as nurse, heal, and love today." * Renaissance Quarterly *"The Matter of Virtue participates in the much-needed re-embracement of feminist scholarship currently taking place in medieval and early modern studies, and is also informed by recent theoretically inflected work on affect, eco-criticism, and the post-human. Yet its unique and prescient focus on virtuous human work is especially relevant to the pandemic crisis, as the model for ethical living it explores applies well to further crises, from the #MeToo movement to Black Lives Matter to the imperatives of climate change. In short, this revisionist study of Chaucer and Shakespeare comes at a good time… [R]eaders will find within this book a set of richly contextualized paradigms that chart a way forward for a new 'ethical turn' to literary studies." * Speculum *"At the heart of Holly A. Crocker’s study of premodern virtues lies a posthumanist project that prompts feminist reimaginings of embodied excellence in English vernacular poetics from 1343 through 1623…Crocker’s book leaves us with a critical posthuman feminist call to action that requires each generation of premodern and early modern scholars to rethink and reimagine embodied ways of ethically being in the world together." * Comitatus *"In The Matter of Virtue, Holly A. Crocker offers a gendered history of virtue. Her complex account rests on the claim that the understanding of ethical virtue was sharply transformed in the High Middle Ages...The book is bracing: Crocker generalizes with convincing confidence, quoting and illustrating to drive her argument forward, and not merely to confirm and settle it." * SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 *"Attending to the full premodern meaning of virtue as well as to recent feminist philosophy, Holly A. Crocker offers an essential new account of ethical life legible in English texts written during the period of transition from late medieval to early modern. The Matter of Virtue is a timely intervention in the history of literary reading that helps us rethink the gendered ecologies of ethics and virtue." * Patricia Clare Ingham, University of Indiana, Bloomington *"Producing compelling readings of canonical texts and contextualizing the texts among a wealth of theological writings, conduct books, and household management manuals, The Matter of Virtue substantially contributes to feminist scholarship on gender prescriptions, marital relations, and female agency in medieval and early modern literature. Holly A. Crocker convincingly argues that traditional feminine traits such as obedience and endurance should not be diminished or dismissed as passivity but should be regarded as active performances of an embodied ethics of vulnerability." * Mario DiGangi, Lehman College and CUNY Graduate Center *Table of ContentsIntroduction. Virtues That Matter PART I. PRESCRIPTIVE FAILURES Chapter 1. The Fragility of Virtue, from Chaucer to Lydgate Chapter 2. The Matter of Virtue, from Henryson to Shakespeare PART II. GRACE, ENACTED: ROMANCE AND MATERIAL VIRTUE Chapter 3. Virtue's Grace: Custance and Other Daughters Chapter 4. Virtue's Knowledge in Lodge and Spenser PART III. HOMELY VIRTUES Chapter 5. Shrewish Virtue, from Chaucer to Shakespeare Conclusion. Legends of Good Women Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisIn the late Middle Ages, Christian conversion could wash a black person''s skin white—or at least that is what happens when a black sultan converts to Christianity in the English romance King of Tars. In Black Metaphors, Cord J. Whitaker examines the rhetorical and theological moves through which blackness and whiteness became metaphors for sin and purity in the English and European Middle Ages—metaphors that guided the development of notions of race in the centuries that followed. From a modern perspective, moments like the sultan''s transformation present blackness and whiteness as opposites in which each condition is forever marked as a negative or positive attribute; medieval readers were instead encouraged to remember that things that are ostensibly and strikingly different are not so separate after all, but mutually construct one another. Indeed, Whitaker observes, for medieval scholars and writers, blackness and whiteness, and the sin and salvation tTrade Review"Cord J. Whitaker's fascinating new study, Black Metaphors, connects the field of medieval rhetoric to the history of racial thinking even as it probes fundamental questions such as the meaning of blackness in the Middle Ages. As such, it acts as an important contribution not only to the intellectual history of race, but also to the emerging field of premodern race studies . . . [T]his highly learned and innovative study constitutes an essential contribution to the growing body of scholarship examining the relation of the premodern era to the histories of race and colonialism." * Studies in the Age of Chaucer *"Amid the growing studies of medieval race thinking, Black Metaphors explores the complicated discursive functioning of blackness in the Middle Ages. It's a timely study of metaphors of blackness (and whiteness) that evolved from classical into medieval, then modern valences of black and white . . . The strength of the study comes from mapping the emergence of modern racism onto medieval discursive culture while stressing an alterity of the Middle Ages that prohibits it from being co-opted by the present." * Modern Philology *"With his thoughtful, learned, subtle, and lucidly written study, Black Metaphors, Cord Whitaker brings a rhetorical bent to recent conversations on race and race thinking in the English Middle Ages. He tracks the polysemous black metaphor, linking blackness with sin and whiteness with innocence, across a range of premodern texts...Whitaker is a powerful and often surprising reader of texts, using moments of ambivalence to unlock a usefully unfamiliar and unparadigmatic Middle Ages. " * Journal of British Studies *"Black Metaphors places itself not only firmly in the context of current debates around questions of race in the field of medieval studies, but it shows why those debates are so profoundly important to those conversations in society writ large . . . Whitaker aptly places this book in the context of 'Black Lives Matters' and the global rise of far right, showing how questions around the Middle Ages are urgent ones that must be addressed if we are to understand the prejudices of today's world . . . This book is essential reading for scholars of Europe of any period and those seeking to understand racism in the world more broadly today because of the legacy of European colonialism." * EuropeNow *""[A] timely and engaging study . . . Whitaker's book succeeds admirably well in demonstrating the frequent shimmer of black metaphor in medieval literature." * Medium Ævum *"Cord Whitaker's timely study pinpointing the roots of modern Western racial thinking in medieval rhetorical practice is a deeply important book not just for medieval studies but for a general audience in these times of increased racial violence . . . The study's concluding pages offer a grim summary of the past twenty years both within and around medieval studies, illustrating the stratification and codification of the black metaphors Whitaker has been exploring through the preceding chapters. By making the connections explicit in these final pages, he crafts a subtle but nonetheless fierce call to action for medievalists, academics, and general readers alike. We would do well to heed it." * Comitatus *"Writing from the intersections of English literary studies and premodern race scholars, this is a foundational text in an emerging field that presents novel ways of reading medieval texts for complexities surrounding race." * Renaissance and Reformation *"Cord J. Whitaker performs an archaeology of how blackness came to be embedded as a fixture of persuasion, religious thought, and poetic imagery. Exploring the logic of 'contrariety' through medieval poetics and argumentation, he reveals the long intimacy of rhetoric and racial discourse from the Middle Ages to the present." * Rita Copeland, author of Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages *"Black Metaphors is a bold, disruptive, penetrating study of the foundational grammars of modern racial thinking in late medieval literature. With provocative new readings of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century works, Cord J. Whitaker dials back the beginnings of modern racism from our commonplace understanding of its original flourishing in the widespread scientific racism of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the rhetorical and religious obsessions with metaphors of blackness and whiteness in the Middle Ages. An important intervention in medieval studies and black studies alike, Black Metaphors sparkles as it fills a longstanding gap in between." * Maurice Wallace, author of Constructing the Black Masculine: Identity and Ideality in African American Men's Literature and Culture, 1775-1995 *"Cord J. Whitaker's captivatingly well-written book takes on the centrality of blackness as a metaphor used in medieval romance, spiritual writings, rhetorical treatises, and travel writing. Weaving modern racialized news accounts of biker rallies together with contemporary folk music and popular medieval texts, Whitaker shows the lasting importance of the European Middle Ages on Western, particularly American, interpretations of white and black skin. An extremely important work in the field of race studies." * Lynn Ramey, author of Black Legacies: Race and the European Middle Ages *"Cord J. Whitaker's rich and textured readings of both lesser-known and well-known texts render them wholly new, fresh, and exciting. Black Metaphors demonstrates an incredibly learned mind at work; Whitaker deftly maneuvers between religious philosophy, philology, classical rhetorical tropes, and contemporary critical race studies." * Ayanna Thompson, author of Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America *"Black Metaphors states plainly that its investigation into matters of race in the European Middle Ages is urgently informed by the agonizingly critical events of today, from the Black Lives Matter movement to the commonplace, quotidian racisms visited on black citizens of the United States. This book imparts stunning insights and will grace many a bookshelf for a long time to come." * Geraldine Heng, author of The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"[T]his book succeeds in showing farce’s historical significance as an engaging ethical form. Noah Guynn makes a major, overdue contribution by giving this repertory its full due. The wit of his writing makes it a peculiarly refreshing tonic during this pandemic year." * Speculum *"Pure Filth is a scholarly yet very readable reappraisal of what farce is as a genre, and of how it is considerably subtler than we often assume. Guynn is commendably fair-minded in his criticism of those he disagrees with. He is scrupulously attentive to avoiding possible pitfalls of decontextualised analysis, whilst acknowledging that the performance history of early farce is always liable to be sketchy. All this makes for an exemplary study in the genre of farce." * H-France *"[T]here is no denying the merits of [Guynn's] project: it is thoughtful and thought-provoking, well grounded in relevant intertexts and critical theory, and groundbreaking in its success at reimagining the 'ludic, interactive, and unpredictable liveness of the festive stage.'" * Renaissance Quarterly *"Pure Filth is an expansive study of early French farce with a great deal to offer anyone interested in the transition from medieval to early modern drama...Rather than downplaying the superficiality, obscenity, and kitsch that characterize farce, Noah Guynn shows how these qualities allow the genre as a whole to imagine 'the possibility of a more ethical and just future precisely by disrupting a conventional language of virtue and vice and by demonstrating the scandalous lack of justice in the present moment.' His argument...is all the more remarkable and worth reading because it troubles along the way any settled boundary between the Middle Ages and postmodernity, theology and theory, compliance and rebellion." * Romantic Review *"[A] brilliant study . . . In Pure Filth, a book that will become a standard reference for people studying farce, Guynn has brought new life and energy to seemingly innocuous plays, showing his readers that the concerns addressed in farce are our concerns, that farceurs were engaged in a serious battle against repressive authority and hegemonic practices." * EuropeNow *"Employing a sensitive multilayered methodology comprised of literary close reading, contemporary theory, examination of material conditions of theater production and performance, and historical contextualization, Pure Filth successfully extracts us from the subversive versus conservative impasse that plagues scholarship on humor." * Lisa Perfetti, Whitman College *"This is a major study of a sizable body of texts that has tended to be marginalized in mainstream literary studies. Using an array of theoretical tools (poststructuralist, anthropological, feminist, and queer), Noah D. Guynn offers a sophisticated and subtle view of works more often perceived as having little literary merit and sometimes rather crudely read through a functionalist lens." * Simon Gaunt, King's College London *Table of ContentsA Note on Sources Introduction. The Many Faces of Farce Chapter 1. The Wisdom of Farts: Ethics and Politics, Farce and Festive Comedy Chapter 2. A Justice to Come: Messianism and Eschatology in Maistre Pierre Pathelin Chapter 3. Sacraments and Scatology, Faith and Doubt: Andrieu de La Vigne's Mystère de Saint Martin and Its Farces Chapter 4. Making History: Misbehaved Women, Well-Behaved Women, and the Sexual Politics of Farce Afterword. Against Protoforms Notes Works Cited Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisDespite the great literary achievements of Chaucer, Langland, and the Pearl Poet, Ricardian English books were still a niche market in 1400. As Kathryn Kerby-Fulton shows, however, their generation was transformational in nurturing the resurgence of English writing, in part as a result of the mass underemployment of clerks originally trained for the church but unable to find steady positions in it. Surviving instead as ecclesiastical or choral piece workers, or in secular jobs in government or private households, this clerical proletariat lived and worked in liminal spaces between the ecclesiastical and lay world. And there the most enterprising found new material—and new audiences—for poetry in English.Since English book production in London prior to 1380 was rare, Kerby-Fulton''s study begins in the prior century with great regional poets, revealing their early experimentation with a new poetics of vocational crisis. Preoccupied with underemployment, patroTrade ReviewWhat a pleasure to pick up a book so attentive to issues of unemployment and precarity—realities that seem to never go away for working people. Kerby-Fulton does this by exploring a subsection of medieval workers—variously understudied, invisible, neglected, or never properly contextualized—for their importance in literary history…The book really makes us think about merit, exclusion, education, ambition, vocation, resiliency, spirituality, inspiration, satire, critique, imagination, independence, hegemony, and how we personally, artistically, and professionally react to it all. Kerby-Fulton humbly makes clear that there is more work to be done. * Modern Philology *Kathryn Kerby-Fulton’s most recent monograph advances an argument of such elegant explanatory power that it seems almost intuitive by the time you finish reading. At its heart is a straightforward account of a structural late-medieval labor crisis. * The Medieval Review *Examining the English writings of clerics in minor orders without benefices or established positions, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton brings to notice a cohort of 'submerged' authors whose existence and writings have been overlooked. She illuminates in rewarding detail the contexts in which these men wrote and the attitudes they may have shared with contemporaries whose names are better known to modern readers. * Julia Boffey, Queen Mary College, University of London *Kathryn Kerby-Fulton's arresting thesis is that the explosion of creativity and innovation that marked late medieval English literature resulted from the precarious working conditions of an underemployed yet overeducated elite: the clerks breaking their backs toiling away for Church and State. The Clerical Proletariat and the Resurgence of Medieval English Poetry is a powerful and provocative book written against the grain of established accounts of literary and social history. * Sebastian Sobecki, University of Groningen *In this rigorously argued book about the literary works produced by underemployed clerics toiling in the professional circles of medieval England, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton offers a riveting account of a generative poetics of vocational crisis. A rare feat that combines the skills of a meticulous literary historian and an ethically committed teacher, the book speaks poignantly and powerfully about lesser-known medieval poets in ways that resonate with the modern precarity of the adjunct or untenured academic laboring for the love of letters. * Arvind Thomas, University of California, Los Angeles *With a masterful blend of critical rigor, empathetic engagement, and deep familiarity with manuscripts and archives, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton offers us a new explanation for the resurgence of English literary writing in the later Middle Ages. Career disappointment, she argues, prompted unbeneficed clerics to bring their training and talent to new audiences in new ways and to do so with inventive and impassioned attention to human suffering and injustice. This is literary history at its best-and a timely and resonant meditation on the uses of adversity. * Sarah McNamer, Georgetown University *Confidently melding social history, labor theory, and literary formalism, this vigorous book is a stunning feat of scholarship that delivers stark new insights about the making of English literature from 1200 to the Reformation. Kerby-Fulton shows us an England brimming with highly educated yet woefully underemployed men-the unbeneficed clerical proletariat-who labored in the liminal space between ecclesiastical and lay worlds, and bared the scars of their vocational struggle in vernacular writings. * Susanna Fein, Kent State University *Table of ContentsContents Preface. "Decidedly not the national language" Introduction. The Clericus Class, Underemployment, and the Golden Age of Middle English Poetry Part I. Clerical Proletarians and the Resurgence of English Poetry: Vocational Crisis and Self-Representation Chapter One. Precedents for Clerical Crisis and Authorial Intervention in Early Middle English Chapter Two. Poetry of Vocational Crisis in Langland's Apologia and the Early Langlandian Tradition Chapter Three. Career Disappointment and Langlandian Tradition I: Hoccleve's Missed Opportunity and Self-Portraiture in Vocational Crisis Chapter Four. Career Disappointment and Langlandian Tradition II: John Audelay as the Voice for a Lost Generation Part II. The Liturgical and Ecclesiastical Proletariat Resurgent and English Verse Chapter Five. Cathedral Songs: Lyric Genres of the Choral Service Class and the Resurgent English Chapter Six. Satire, Drama, and Censorship: Submerged Literary Circles at the Cathedral Chapter Seven. The Clerical Proletariat and Public Genres of the Cathedral World: St. Erkenwald as a St. Paul's Text Conclusion. The Poet as Public Intellectual: Achievements and Characteristics of Proletarian Writers Notes Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisWhat would English literary history look like if the unit of measure were not the political reign but the poetic tradition? The earliest poems in English were written in alliterative verse, the meter of Beowulf. Alliterative meter preceded tetrameter, which first appeared in the twelfth century, and tetrameter in turn preceded pentameter, the five-stress line that would become the dominant English verse form of modernity, though it was invented by Chaucer in the 1380s. While this chronology is accurate, Eric Weiskott argues, the traditional periodization of literature in modern scholarship distorts the meaning of meters as they appeared to early poets and readers. In Meter and Modernity in English Verse, 1350-1650, Weiskott examines the uses and misuses of these three meters as markers of literary time, medieval or modern, though all three were in concurrent use both before and after 1500. In each section of the book, he considers two of the traditions through the prism of a third elTrade ReviewThis smart, inventive, and fastidiously researched book makes a case for a new relationship among meter, genre, and literary periodization in English poetry…Weiskott is a metricist and philologist of omnivorous learning…The new formalism exemplified by Weiskott requires far more thoughtfulness than the old New Criticism; it requires a far greater knowledge than the New Historicism..[S]cholarship at its most exact and provocative. * Studies in the Age of Chaucer *Meter and Modernity in English Verse...is an argument against the accepted periodization that would draw a firm line between the 'medieval' and the 'modern.' It is a pitch on behalf of an English genre that lasted from the mid-fifteenth to the mid seventeenth century, political prophecy in verse. And it is an account of the major metrical traditions in English from the mid-thirteenth to the twentieth century...[A]n endeavor that shines a light on verse practice and raises the stakes of metrical enquiry. * Modern Philology *Eric Weiskott has written a searching, ambitious book with significant implications for our thinking about literary-historical time. Besides its obvious relevance to scholars studying poetics across later Middle English and early modern English, Meter and Modernity should also engage a wider range of readers. It investigates how verse-craft in any time might relate to human experience, and to regional, national, and transnational cultural formation. The book also, though, explores how we organise literary research and teaching. It would be good, and also a fitting implementation of the thrust of Weiskott’s arguments, if scholars who think of themselves as working on periods other than “the medieval” read this book...[The book] lays out a new landscape of value for early English literature. * English Studies *Weiskott brings decades of metrical scholarship on prosody into focus to demystify pentameter's prestige. With deep linguistic and archival knowledge, his book writes new plural histories of English verse forms for early periods in which there is little explicit poetics or meta-prosodic reflection...His book answers the pressing need for poetics to find rigorous methods for moving between time periods with truly divergent and non-'modern' literary cultures...Weiskott marries archival, philological, metrical, and disciplinary awareness in what should be required reading for all medievalists and prosodists. * Modern Language Review *In Meter and Modernity in English Verse, Eric Weiskott offers a stunning example of metrical inquiry at its finest in a study of a neglected genre that, from its modest corner of the literary world, poses daring and difficult questions about how we organize knowledge in a 'virtual field of play both constraining and responsive to the continuous history of cultural decision-making' In the process, Weiskott presents an alternative history of literature free from the warping effects of periodization. Gracefully blending Bourdieuan theory with linguistic and archival evidence, Weiskott recenters a marginalized genre—the political prophecy—among intersecting metrical cultures in England from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. Exquisite codicological analysis complements precise philological reasoning in a probing audit of the methods of historical-literary scholarship. Through three parts and eleven chapters, Weiskott mounts an erudite, even soulful interrogation of the limitations of periodization on our understanding of, and relationship to and with, the dynamic practices of early English metrical communities. * Arthuriana *[A] timely intervention in the intellectual project of rethinking the medieval-modern divide in literary and cultural history...Written with lucidity, intellectual breadth, and philological rigor, Meter and Modernity demonstrates that medieval and modern are inadequate terms to think about meter. * Renaissance Quartlery *Eric Weiskott saves us from reading the history of English poetry as a narrative in which formal, thematic, and linguistic developments keep step across a progress of periods. Meter, in its own diversity-the asynchronous rise and fall of its many kinds-proves to be an ideal instrument for disaggregating the rates and durations of change across many domains. * Jeff Dolven, Princeton University *Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations Note on Quotations and Scansion Preface Introduction. Modernity: The Problem of a History Part I. Alliterative Meter, Tetrameter, Political Prophecy Chapter 1. English Political Prophecy: Coordinates of Form and History Chapter 2. The Age of Prophecy Chapter 3. The Ireland Prophecy and the Future of Alliterative Verse Chapter 4. Tetrameter: The Future of Alliterative Verse Chapter 5. Where Have All the Pentameter Prophecies Gone? Part II. Alliterative Meter, Pentameter, Langland Chapter 6. Alliterative Meter and Blank Verse, 1540-1667 Chapter 7. The Rhymelessness of Piers Plowman Chapter 8. Langland's Meter and Blank Verse, 1700-2000 Part III. Tetrameter, Pentameter, Chaucer Chapter 9. Chaucer and the Problem of Modernity Chapter 10. Chaucer's English Metrical Phonology: Tetrameter to Pentameter Chapter 11. The Age of Pentameter Conclusion. From Archive to Canon Appendix A. English Prophecy Books Appendix B. Some Texts of English Verse Prophecies Not Noted in NIMEV Appendix C. Compilers, Scribes, and Owners of Manuscripts Containing Political Prophecy Appendix D. The Ireland Prophecy Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisLong before the Romantics embraced nature, people in the West saw the human and nonhuman worlds as both intimately interdependent and violently antagonistic. With its peerless selection of ninety-eight original sources concerned with the natural world and humankind's place within it, The Marvels of the World offers a corrective to the still-prevalent tendency to dismiss premodern attitudes toward nature as simple or univocal. Gathering together medical texts, herbals, and how-to books, as well as scientific, religious, philosophical, and poetic works dating from antiquity to the dawn of the Enlightenment, the anthology explores both mainstream and unconventional thinking about the natural world. Its seven parts focus on philosophy and science; plants; animals; weather and climate; ways of inhabiting the land; gardens and gardening; and European encounters with the wider world. Each section and each of the book's selections is prefaced with a helpful introduction by volume editor RebeTrade Review"[A]n invaluable addition to the growing list of anthologies on this topic, not least because it offers an unusually expansive scope (Antiquity to 1700), but also because its contextual material is enormously readable and informative; each section provides a solid grounding in nature writing that situates the readings topically and with a sense of their position in time and place… Bushnell’s anthology serves to rewrite natural history in important ways, shifting the usual narratives. It also demonstrates how the teleology of human interactions with the landscapes they inhabit is as uncertain, perhaps even as unpredictable, as the particulars of the seasons themselves; and it illustrates how that natural history was inscribed in the soil as well as on the page, by those who toiled as well as those who imagined." * Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment *"Rebecca Bushnell’s anthology offers its readers 112 excerpts of nature writing from antiquity through the late seventeenth century. The product of a seminar she taught at the University of Pennsylvania, this collection of sources immerses readers in a well-curated collection...[T]he very premise of the volume invites us to contemplate genres of writing about nature across the centuries. Bushnell has done a scholarly service by sharing her own work as a teacher of premodern nature writing." * Speculum *Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgments Introduction Part 1. Natural Philosophy and Natural Knowledge Hebrew Bible, Genesis 1 Aristotle, Physics Lucretius, De rerum natura, or On the Nature of Things Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia, or Natural History, On the Nature of the Earth Avicenna, The Canon of Medicine, On the Elements Hildegard of Bingen, Causae et curae, or Causes and Cures Alain de Lille, De planctu naturae, or The Complaint of Nature Roger Bacon, Opus majus, or Greater Work Saint Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de potentia dei, or Disputed Questions on the Power of God Pseudo-Albertus Magnus, The Book of the Secrets of Albertus Magnus Giambattista della Porta, Magia naturalis, or Natural Magic Guillaume du Bartas, La sepmaine ou creation du monde, or Divine Weeks and Works, On the Seventh Day Hugh Platt, Floraes Paradise Francis Bacon, Novum organum, or New Organon, and New Atlantis Hannah Wolley, The Ladies Directory Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, "First Dream" Part 2. Plants Theophrastus, De causis plantarum, or On the Causes of Plants Aristotle, De anima, or Of the Soul Dioscorides, De materia medica, or Herbal Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia, or Natural History, On Flowers Pseudo-Apuleius, The Old English Herbarium Geoffrey Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women Pierre de Ronsard, "Ode to Cassandra" Leonhart Fuchs, De historia stirpium, or On the History of Plants William Turner, A New Herbal John Gerard, The Herbal or General History of Plants Guillaume Du Bartas, La sepmaine ou creation du monde, or Divine Weeks and Works, On Aconite William Lawson, A New Orchard and Garden, On the Cultivation of Trees John Parkinson, Paradisi in Sole: Paradisus Terrestris, On Auriculas George Herbert, "The Flower" Ralph Austen, A Treatise of Fruit Trees, and The Spiritual Use of an Orchard or Garden of Fruit Trees Johanna St. John, Manuscript Recipes Samuel Gilbert,Florist's Vade-Mecum, On Auriculas Part 3. Animals Aristotle, Historia animalium, or The History of Animals Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia, or Natural History, On Animals Physiologus Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum, or On the Properties of Things Second-Family Bestiary Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Geoffrey Chaucer, The Parliament of Fowls Marie de France, Fables John Lydgate, "The Debate of the Horse, Goose, and Sheep" Anselm Turmeda, The Disputation of the Donkey Michel de Montaigne, "An Apology for Raymond Sebond" John Caius, Of English Dogges Thomas Johnson, Cornucopiae Edward Topsell, The History of Four-Footed Beasts Gervase Markham, Markham's Masterpiece Hester Pulter, "The Ugly Spider" Richard Lovelace, "The Snail" Margaret Cavendish, Grounds of Natural Philosophy Robert Hooke, Micrographia Part 4. Weather, Climate, and Seasons Hippocrates, Airs, Waters, Places Aristotle, Meteorologica, or Meteorology Virgil, Georgics, Book 1, On the Storm Pseudo-Aristotle, Secreta secretorum, or The Secret of Secrets Avicenna, The Canon of Medicine, On Climate Wandalbert of Prüm, On the Names, Signs, Times of Planting, and Qualities of Weather of the Twelve Months William Ram, Rams Little Dodoen Thomas Tusser, An Hundredth Points of Good Husbandrie William Shakespeare, King Lear Amelia Lanyer, "The Description of Cookham" William Shakespeare, The Tempest Thomas Jackson, The Raging Tempest Stilled Thomas Sprat and Robert Hooke, History of the Royal Society, On Weather Samuel Gilbert, Florist's Vade-Mecum, Instructions for July Part 5. Inhabiting the Land Theocritus, Idyll 7 Virgil, Eclogue 1 Virgil, Georgics, On Farming Columella, Res rustica, or On Agriculture, On Farming Walter of Henley, Dite de hosbondrie, or Boke of Husbandry William Langland, Piers Plowman Second Shepherd's Play, from the Wakefield Mystery Plays Jacopo Sannazaro, Arcadia Thomas More, Utopia Thomas Tusser, Five Hundredth Points of Good Husbandrie William Harrison, Description of England Edmund Spenser, The Shephearde's Calendar Gervase Markham, The English Husbandman, On Farming Ben Jonson, "To Penshurst" Mary Wroth, Urania Robert Herrick, "The Hock-Cart, or Harvest Home" Walter Blith, The English Improver Improved Part 6. Gardens and Gardening Columella, Res rustica, or On Agriculture, On Gardens Pietro de' Crescenzi, Liber ruralium commodorum, or Book of Rural Commodity Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le roman de la rose, or The Romance of the Rose Nicolas Bollard, On Planting and Grafting Thomas Hill, The Gardener's Labyrinth Robert Laneham, Description of the Garden at Kenilworth Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene Gervase Markham, The English Husbandman, On Grafting William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale William Lawson, A New Orchard and Garden and The Countrie Housewife's Garden, On Domestic Gardening John Parkinson, Paradisi in Sole: Paradisus Terrestris, On Nature and Gardening Mary Somerset, Duchess of Beaufort, Description of Her Garden René Rapin, Hortorum Libri IV, or Of Gardens Andrew Marvell, "The Mower Against Gardens" Hester Pulter, "The Snail, the Tulip, and the Bee" John Evelyn, Elysium Britannicum, or The Royal Gardens John Worlidge, Systema Horticulturae, or The Art of Gardening in Three Books Part 7. Outlandish Natural Worlds Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia, or Natural History, On Arabia, Ethiopia, and the Fortunate Isles John Mandeville, Travels Leo Africanus, Della descrittione dell'Africa, or Description of Africa Jean de Léry, Histoire d'un voyage fait en la terre de Brésil, or History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil Thomas Harriot, Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia Walter Raleigh, Discovery of the Large, Rich, and Beautiful Empire of Guiana Michael Drayton, "Ode: To the Virginian Voyage" John Parkinson, Theatrum Botanicum Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society, Observations on Java Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave: A True History Recommended Reading and Bibliography Permissions to Reprint Index

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Book SynopsisHow, Barbara Newman asks, did the myth of the separable heart take such a firm hold in the Middle Ages, from lovers exchanging hearts with one another to mystics exchanging hearts with Jesus? What special traits gave both saints and demoniacs their ability to read minds? Why were mothers who died in childbirth buried in unconsecrated ground? Each of these phenomena, as diverse as they are, offers evidence for a distinctive medieval idea of the person in sharp contrast to that of the modern subject of individual.Starting from the premise that the medieval self was more permeable than its modern counterpart, Newman explores the ways in which the self''s porous boundaries admitted openness to penetration by divine and demonic spirits and even by other human beings. She takes up the idea of coinherence, a state familiarly expressed in the amorous and devotional formula I in you and you in me, to consider the theory and practice of exchanging the self with others in five relationalTrade Review"This thorough work will be indispensable to those interested in the complexities of the interpersonal in the medieval period, and how the foundations and lexicon of Christian theology influenced the ways in which individuals thought of themselves and their connections to others. Newman’s readings of those connections are fascinating and thought-provoking, not least because they hint at the ways we are all still vulnerable to one another; there is a familiarity pulsing beneath all of that alterity...Newman’s pedagogical gift is in presenting all of those seemingly strange medieval relationships in such a way that they reach across the centuries into our individual bodies and minds, tuning them to the frequency of their own peculiar connections." * Times Literary Supplement *"As Barbara Newman shows in her brilliant book, medieval Christians understood themselves to be interconnected to an extent that would surprise many people today, at least in Western cultures. Their minds and hearts were legible to other people as well as to God and the devil, and they saw themselves as vulnerable to interference from human and supernatural forces, to both good and bad ends....The stories Newman tells reveal the profound strangeness of the Middle Ages....As Newman notes at the end of her study, it’s hard to determine the more vital ethical imperative: to protect ourselves by raising boundaries, or to accept how intertwined we really are." * London Review of Books *"In The Permeable Self, Barbara Newman not only offers insightful readings of a different theory of mind than one we know today, but also provides an inspiring way to think about the meaningful contributions that academic work in the humanities can offer...Her exploration of how medieval Western culture initially imagined and informed itself through a very different theory of mind, accompanied by frequent references to contemporary echoes of this powerful tradition, invites readers to become reacquainted with a way of living in the world that offers different kinds of valuable possibilities than our cultural training constrains us to expect." * Literature and Theology *"Fascinating in its very subject, The Permeable Self is yet another demonstration—not that any were needed—of Newman’s exquisite critical eye. Beautifully argued, outstandingly copyedited, and deeply learned, it is a study likely both to inspire powerful responses and hold the attention of scholars for many years to come." * Journal of English and Germanic Philology *"The Permeable Self is of high quality and based on years of research and expertise. It is intellectually stimulating and thought provoking. To echo Newman herself, the study of medieval relationships haswide applications—ranging from new scholarly approaches to, for example, the study of emotions as well as to an alternative theory of mind. This is a book worth reading." * Speculum *"Essential...In keen and insightful close readings, [Newman] makes a compelling case for the importance, to the medieval self, of the concept of coinherence, of 'being-within-one-another'...Newman weaves together a wealth of research from literature, letters, folklore, and historical documents, meticulously contextualizing each relationship. The discussion of ways in which variations of coinherence intersect in saints lives is particularly rich and an exciting contribution to the study of hagiography....For researchers of medieval studies, this is required reading, but there is much here for anyone studying ideas of self and personhood." * Choice *"Barbara Newman's The Permeable Self takes readers on a journey that explores the inner workings of extremely complex human and symbolic relationships. Centered on the concepts of coinherence and indwelling, her book ranges widely from topics like saintly telepathy, the exchange of hearts, and childbirth to the demonic invasion of human bodies. The common thread is humans' permeability, their openness to both good and evil others. In clear, accessible, and often witty prose, Newman provides extraordinary insights into the medieval psyche." * Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, author of The Strange Case of Ermine de Reims: A Medieval Woman Between Demons and Saints *"Charles Taylor has contrasted the 'buffered self' of a secular age to the 'porous self' of other ages. In The Permeable Self Barbara Newman fleshes out medieval understandings of porous personhood in fascinating detail, supplementing, but also correcting, Taylor's influential account. Her many insights about medieval personhood have profound relevance to debates about the intersubjectivity of modern liberalism and postmodernism's liquid selves." * Ryan McDermott, University of Pittsburgh *"The Permeable Self is a brilliant exploration of medieval ways of imagining mind and body. Teaching, love, pregnancy, and mental illness look startlingly different when people take for granted that thoughts can enter other bodies directly. That in turn should push readers to ask how modern assumptions shape modern experience in ways so fundamental we may not notice them. One of the most fascinating books I have read this year." * T. M. Luhrmann, author of How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others *Table of ContentsIntroduction. Members of One Another Chapter 1. Teacher and Student: Shaping Boys Chapter 2. Saint and Sinner: Reading Minds Chapter 3. Lovers: Exchanging Hearts Chapter 4. Mother and Child: Giving Birth Chapter 5. God and the Devil: Possessing Souls Conclusion, or Why It Still Matters Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisTo seek sanctuary from persecution by entering a sacred space is an act of desperation, but also a symbolic endeavor: fugitives invoke divine presence to reach a precarious safe haven that imbues their lives with religious, social, or political significance. In medieval England, sanctuary was upheld under both canon and common law, and up to five hundred people sought sanctuary every year. What they found, however, was not so much a static refuge as a temporary respite from further action—confession and exile—or from further violence—jurisdictional conflict, harrying or starvation, a breaching of the sanctuary.While sanctuary has usually been analyzed as part of legal history, in Uncertain Refuge Elizabeth Allen explores the symbolic consequences of sanctuary seeking in English literary works—miracle collections, chronicles, romances, and drama. She ponders the miracle of a stag''s escape from the hunt into a churchyard as well as the account of Trade ReviewA splendid, exemplary, important book. Its erudition puts it on the same level as some of the field-transcending, encyclopedic work of medievalists of past generations. But its sense of the stakes of its argument, particularly its extended engagement with the urgency of sanctuary and care for the marginalized, make it a crucial book for this moment. * D. Vance Smith, Princeton University *Elizabeth Allen's Uncertain Refuge is an important, indeed necessary, intervention in the scholarly conversation about medieval concepts of sanctuary and the power they continue to hold today. By considering its cultural meaning and power, Allen brings a substantially different perspective to sanctuary in medieval England than others, greatly deepening our understanding of its significance. * Shannon McSheffrey, Concordia University *Table of ContentsNote on Translation Introduction. Medieval Sanctuary: Legal History and Symbolic Action 1 Chapter 1. The Miracle of Cuthbert's Stag Chapter 2. The Flight of the King's Man: Hubert de Burgh in the Chronica Majora Chapter 3. Breaches at Westminster and the Making of a Sanctuary King Chapter 4. The Dark Sanctuary of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Chapter 5. Robin Hood and the Limits of Sanctuary Chapter 6. Kingship and the Politics of Pity in the Histories of Perkin Warbeck Coda. Sanctuary in Southwest Georgia, 1962 Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisThis volume examines the manuscript of the ""Gawain-Pearl"" poet in the light of a compositional method well recognised from the literature of ancient Greece and Rome through the Renaissance, but largely overlooked by modern criticism.

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Book SynopsisOffers an in-depth comparative study of two classic literary works, examining essential themes such as change, the self, and humans’ dependence on and isolation from others. Stephanie Nelson shows that in these texts, both Joyce and Homer address identity by looking at the paradox of time - that people are constantly changing yet remain the same.

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Book SynopsisPresenting an English translation of the literary compositions ascribed to Liudprand, the bishop of Cremona from 962 to 972, this work offers insight into society and culture in western Europe during the iron century. It reveals European attitudes toward the Byzantine Empire and the culture of its refined capital city.

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Book SynopsisPeter of Blois pursued the life of a twelfth-century intellectual with vigor and passion tinged with anxiety. This book offers a study of Peter of Blois' life, thought, and writings. It explores how Peter brought classical, patristic, monastic, and scholastic traditions into an uneasy synthesis, and deployed them in letters.

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Book SynopsisAncient biographies were more than accounts of the deeds of past heroes and guides for moral living. They were also arenas for debating pressing philosophical questions and establishing intellectual credentials, as Arthur P. Urbano argues in this study of biographies composed in Late Antiquity.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“Oleg Bychkov's creative, meticulously researched and lucidly written monograph makes a decisive contribution to a number of scholarly fields and will appeal to a wide array of readers, whether they are concerned primarily with the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar, antique or medieval aesthetic theory, contemporary aesthetics, hermeneutics, theological method, or opening up heretofore uncharted byways for thinking the beautiful.” – Christianity and Literature

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Book SynopsisThis is one of the first complete collections of medieval Latin fables to appear in modern English. Odo of Cheriton (c1185- c1247) wrote sophisticated fables, filled with great wit and humour, yet highly moral, even didactic, in keeping with the age - one vigorous in religious, philosophic, scientific, and social debate and conflict.

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Book SynopsisThis work brings together the disciplines of history and English literature to present interpretations of late 14th-century English society.

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisReveals the important links between medieval studies and Jacques Lacan. This book demonstrates how Lacan's theory of desire is bound to his reading of medieval texts. It alters the relationship between psychoanalysis and medieval studies and illuminates the ways that premodern and post-modern epochs and ideologies share a concern with the subject.

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Book SynopsisPresents the work of nine distinguished Chaucer scholars inspired by the work of D.W. Robertson Jr., whose seminal 1969 study Preface to Chaucer has exerted wide influence in medieval studies and sparked new interest in the literary iconography of Middle English.

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Book Synopsis‘Blood is thicker than water’, goes the old proverb. But do common bloodlines in fact demand special duties or prescribe affections? Thicker than Water examines the roots of this belief by studying the omnipresent discourse of bloodlines and kindred relations in the literature of early modern Europe.Trade Review“While tightly focused on the enjoyably gruesome imagery of blood as it appears in Renaissance texts, Weindling’s study encompasses significantly larger cultural, political, and philosophical discussions, offering valuable insight into both the period and its literature. Weindling’s fascinating international scope presents major English dramatists in a wider European context, offering fresh perspectives, and making significant contribution to the medical humanities field. A wonderfully rich, generous, and stimulating study, gaining real interpretive rewards from its gory focus."—Eric Langley, author of Shakespeare's Contagious Sympathies

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Book SynopsisAt the centre of Petrarch's vision, announcing a new way of seeing the world, was the individual, a sense of the self. This self seemed to be fragmented in Petrarch's work, divided among the worlds of philosophy, faith, and love of the classics, politics, art, and religion. This book shows how these fragmentary explorations relate to each other.Trade Review"A very important study. Mazzotta not only gives us a dense and rich new portrait of a much-studied and absolutely major figure, but he also brings to the fore the abiding force and value of Petrarch's 'worlds' of discourse and thought to many of today's debates regarding, for example, the relation of aesthetics and rhetoric to the politico-historical realm, or the epistemological validity of poetry, or the constructedness of the self."—Rebecca West, University of Chicago"A richly textured, deeply learned, and broadly inclusive study of Petrarch's writing, his historical situation, and his contribution to our own cultural formation."—William Kennedy, Cornell UniversityTable of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Note on Petrarch's Texts xiii Introduction 1 I. Antiquity and the New Arts 14 II. The Thought of Love 33 III. The Canzoniere and the Language of the Self 58 IV. Ethics of Self 80 V. The World of History 102 VI. Orpheus: Rhetoric and Music 129 VII. Humanism and Monastic Spirituality 147 Appendix 1: Petrarch's Song 126 167 Appendix 2: Ambivalence of Power 181 Notes 193 Index 223

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Book SynopsisAn exploration into representations of the Amazon, and how they were essential to homoerotic and heterosexual social constructions in early English texts. This book takes up a range of literary, historical, and theoretical texts in order to examine the relationship between Amazon myth and the social conventions that governed gender and sexuality.Trade Review“If you are content with received views of female constriction under early modern patriarchy, don't read this book! Through the figure of the Amazon, Kathryn Schwarz offers a dazzling, ground-breaking reinterpretation of major canonical authors—Raleigh, Shakespeare, Jonson, Spenser, Sidney—that is also a celebration of the power and agency of women.”—Leah Marcus, author of Unediting the Renaissance : Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton“Schwarz’s approach is sophisticated and wide-reaching, as she thinks through the nuanced way in which a single reference or metaphor mediates issues of sexuality/desire, on the one hand, and community formation on the other.”—Wendy Wall, author of The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and Gender in the English RenaissanceTable of ContentsIllustrations Preface Introduction Part One Abroad at Home: The Question of Queens Chapter OneFalling off the Endge of the WOrld: Ralegh among the Amazons Chapter TwoFearful Simile; Stealing the Breech in Shakespeare's Chronicle Plays Chapter ThreeStranger in the Mirror: Amazon Reflections in the Jacobean Queen's Masque Part TwoSplitting the Difference: Homoeroticism and Home Life Chapter FourDressed to Kill: Looking for Love in the Faerie Queene Chapter FiveThe Probably Impossible: Inventing Lesbians in Arcadia Chapter SixTragical Mirth: Framing Shakespeare's Hippolyta Epilogue: Via the Two Noble Kinsmen Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe Cloud of Unknowing was the work of an unknown 14th-century English writer with a powerful message of God's unconditional love in the face of despair. Johnston's theological treatment of this and other works by the same writer makes a conscious comparison with Oriental ways of contemplation.Trade Review"Mystics have groped for words in which to account for the supreme reality of this experience... All this is said in classic and unforgettable pages by The Cloud of Unknowing, the work of an anonymous fourteenth-century English writer...Johnston [provides] the first extended and coherent theological treatment ... a most welcome and valuable contribution." -- -Thomas Merton

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Book SynopsisOffers the English translation of three important sources of knowledge about the survival of classical mythology from the Carolingian era to the High Middle Ages and beyond.Trade Review"First complete English translation of three Latin texts discovered in the 19th century that contain collections of ancient mythology, with commentary, compiled in the Vatican." -The Chronicle of Higher Education "Fills a real scholarly void ... a valuable addition to scholarly literature." -- -Frank Coulson Ohio State University "Pepin has given students of the Middle Ages a lucid translation of three important works, especially the valuable Third Mythography." -Speculum "A precise and readable translation ... extraordinarily carefully executed." -- -Andrew Galloway Cornell University

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Book SynopsisPrivate Lives, Public Deaths draws on classical studies, Hegel, and modern philosophical analyses to describe how Sophocle’s tragedy Antigone expresses a key concern of ancient Greek culture: the value of a living individual.Trade Review“Strauss’s monograph stands as a unique contribution that will be impossible to ignore for many years to come. The reason is that Strauss does not simply do an analysis of Sophocles’ play, nor does he merely review the literature—although his readings of both the play and the literature are exemplary. In addition, Strauss constructs Antigone as a figure or a concept that is essential today in order to comprehend our individuality as well as the political.” ---—Dimitris Vardoulakis, University of Western SidneyTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Note on Transliterations Introduction: Tragedy, the City, and Its Dead 1. Two Orders of Individuality 2. The Citizen 3. Loss Embodied 4. States of Exclusion 5. Inventing Life 6. Mourning, Longing, Loving 7. Exit Tragedy appendixes Appendix A: Summary of Sophocles's Labdacid Cycle Appendix B: Timeline of Relevant Events in Ancient Greece Notes Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisPrivate Lives, Public Deaths draws on classical studies, Hegel, and modern philosophical analyses to describe how Sophocle’s tragedy Antigone expresses a key concern of ancient Greek culture: the value of a living individual.Trade Review“Strauss’s monograph stands as a unique contribution that will be impossible to ignore for many years to come. The reason is that Strauss does not simply do an analysis of Sophocles’ play, nor does he merely review the literature—although his readings of both the play and the literature are exemplary. In addition, Strauss constructs Antigone as a figure or a concept that is essential today in order to comprehend our individuality as well as the political.” ---—Dimitris Vardoulakis, University of Western SidneyTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Note on Transliterations Introduction: Tragedy, the City, and Its Dead 1. Two Orders of Individuality 2. The Citizen 3. Loss Embodied 4. States of Exclusion 5. Inventing Life 6. Mourning, Longing, Loving 7. Exit Tragedy appendixes Appendix A: Summary of Sophocles's Labdacid Cycle Appendix B: Timeline of Relevant Events in Ancient Greece Notes Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisRapp offers a recast interpretation of Plato through a focus upon the transformative processes required by his texts in which spaces of ordinary oblivion put a reader at risk. The decomposing and generative effects of these oblivions reflect the ineluctable porosity of human life and the fertile fragility of forgetting.Trade Review"Rapp's ambitious and exciting work plumbs the depths of Plato's text with verve and sings with a voice as poetic as Plato's own." --Highly Recommended -Choice Magazine "This is an extraordinarily creative, and lyrically written, meditation on the philosophical meaning and experiential richness of what is, by any measure, one of Plato's most creative and lyrical dialogues. Countering the all too comon belief that Plato was strictly hostile to poetry and poets, an idea the *Phaedrus* belies, Rapp weaves contemporary poetic voices into her meditation on this preeminently Greek philosophical vision. The result is a tapesty of exceptional beauty and insight." -- -Louis Ruprecht Georgia State UniversityTable of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments Introduction: Replete & Porous: Reading the Phaedrus and Writing the Soul 1. The Teeming Body: Making Images of the Soul Through Words 2. The Fluid Body: Madness & Displaced Discourse 3. The Torn Body: Forgotten Logos & Unmoored Ideals Epilogue: Beyond the Phaedrus Ghost Ribs of Discourse: Radical & Domesticated Forgetting in Euripides, Zhuangzi, and Aristotle Poetics as First Philosophy Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIn Dante’s Wake presents a collection of essays from internationally renowned Dante scholar John Freccero. Penetrating first the Divine Comedy and then the powerful influence of Dante on those who followed him, Freccero’s volume is an invaluable companion for any reader of Dante.Trade Review"John Freccero is one of the great dantisti of his age. Freccero's erudition is as impressive in its depth (Plato and NeoPlatonism, Augustine, Italian philology) as in its breadth (Gramsci, Derrida, Girard, the epic, the novel). Along with the erudition, moreover, there is his beautifully lucid style: The prose is remarkably clear, graceful, eloquent, illusive, and at times even epigrammatic." -- -Peter S. Hawkins Yale Divinity School "John Freccero's learned and lucid work on Dante has influenced generations of Dante scholars and others in a variety of fields. The remarkable range of allusions and analysis in this collection of essays offers a rich context for understanding key episodes of the Inferno as well as later literature engaged with comparable issues. The collection reaffirms the resonance and lasting value of Freccero's brilliant understanding of the reciprocity of theology and poetics." -- -Rachel Jacoff Wellesley CollegeTable of ContentsTable of Contents Acknowledgments Editors' introduction List of Figures Shipwreck in the Prologue The Portrait of Francesca: Inferno 5 Epitaph for Guido The Eternal Image of the Father Allegory and Autobiography In the Wake of the Argo on a Boundless Sea The Fig Tree and the Laurel Medusa and the Madonna of Forli: Political Sexuality in Machiavelli Donne's Valediction: Forbidding Mourning Zeno's Last Cigarette Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIn Dante's Wake presents a collection of essays from internationally renowned Dante scholar John Freccero. Penetrating first the Divine Comedy and then the powerful influence of Dante on those who followed him, Freccero's volume is an invaluable companion for any reader of Dante.Trade Review"John Freccero is one of the great dantisti of his age. Freccero's erudition is as impressive in its depth (Plato and NeoPlatonism, Augustine, Italian philology) as in its breadth (Gramsci, Derrida, Girard, the epic, the novel). Along with the erudition, moreover, there is his beautifully lucid style: The prose is remarkably clear, graceful, eloquent, illusive, and at times even epigrammatic." -- -Peter S. Hawkins Yale Divinity School "John Freccero's learned and lucid work on Dante has influenced generations of Dante scholars and others in a variety of fields. The remarkable range of allusions and analysis in this collection of essays offers a rich context for understanding key episodes of the Inferno as well as later literature engaged with comparable issues. The collection reaffirms the resonance and lasting value of Freccero's brilliant understanding of the reciprocity of theology and poetics." -- -Rachel Jacoff Wellesley CollegeTable of ContentsTable of Contents Acknowledgments Editors' introduction List of Figures Shipwreck in the Prologue The Portrait of Francesca: Inferno 5 Epitaph for Guido The Eternal Image of the Father Allegory and Autobiography In the Wake of the Argo on a Boundless Sea The Fig Tree and the Laurel Medusa and the Madonna of Forli: Political Sexuality in Machiavelli Donne's Valediction: Forbidding Mourning Zeno's Last Cigarette Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisBeginning with a reading of Plato’s Statesman, this work interrogates the relationship between life and being in Plato’s thought. It argues that in his later dialogues Plato discovers—or invents—a form of true or real life that transcends all merely biological life and everything that is commonly called life.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Philosophy’s Gigantomachia over Life and Being 1. The Lifelines of the Statesman 2. Life and Spontaneity 3. The Shepherd and the Weaver: A Foucauldian Fable 4. The Measure of Life and Logos 5. Fruits of the Poisonous Tree: Plato and Alcidamas on the Evils of Writing 6. The Life of Law and the Law of Life 7. Plato and the Invention of Life Itself Conclusion: Life on the Line Acknowledgments Notes Index

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Book SynopsisBeginning with a reading of Plato’s Statesman, this work interrogates the relationship between life and being in Plato’s thought. It argues that in his later dialogues Plato discovers—or invents—a form of true or real life that transcends all merely biological life and everything that is commonly called life.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Philosophy’s Gigantomachia over Life and Being 1. The Lifelines of the Statesman 2. Life and Spontaneity 3. The Shepherd and the Weaver: A Foucauldian Fable 4. The Measure of Life and Logos 5. Fruits of the Poisonous Tree: Plato and Alcidamas on the Evils of Writing 6. The Life of Law and the Law of Life 7. Plato and the Invention of Life Itself Conclusion: Life on the Line Acknowledgments Notes Index

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsIntroduction: Speech Bonds, by Jill Frank | 1 Part I: The Republic 1 Couch City, or, The Discourse of the Couch | 13 2 Simonides, Part 1 | 25 3 Simonides, Part 2 | 46 4 Simonides, Part 3 | 62 5 Simonides, Part 4 | 82 Part II: The Protagoras 6 Macrological Mystification: Protagoras’s Myth | 109 7 The Ethics of Etceteration | 123 8 The Parts of Gold and the Parts of Face | 130 9 Sophistry as Safemindedness in the Protagoras | 143 Notes | 171 Index | 177

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Book SynopsisExplores the possibilities and limits of terms such as body, woman, gender, and agency to analyse texts that come out of altogether different temporal and cultural contexts. Through close textual readings of a wide range of classical and medieval narratives, Rajyashree Pandey offers new ways of understanding such terms within the context of medieval Buddhist knowledge.

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Book SynopsisStories of acolytes (chigo monogatari) from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries form the basis of this book, an original and detailed literary analysis of six tales coupled with a thorough examination of the sociopolitical, religious, and cultural matrices that produced these texts.

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Book SynopsisThe whole subject is brought up to date - Arthurian buffs will want this book. DAILY TELEGRAPHWho was the real Arthur? Why were his knights so famous? Was he buried at Glastonbury? Richard Barber takes the story from the anonymous 8th century chronicler who first listed his battles to the novelists of the 20th century. A clear and readable account of the development of the stories about Arthur and his court from the earliest times to the present day.Trade ReviewA welcome paperback re-issue of a much-used edition. * YEAR'S WORK IN MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES *Un manuel d'initiation couvrant avec elegance un millenaire de culture. * CAHIERS DE CIVILISATION MEDIEVALE *Authoritative but accessible...[an] admirable survey... If you want a reliable overview of this phenomenal figure as he is developed and refurbished, then you can't do much better than this. * PENDRAGON *Table of ContentsThe elusive hero; Arthur the emperor; Arthur and his court; the Arthurian legend in Germany - Tristan and Parzival; the English poems; the flower of chivalry; Arthur and popular tradition; the search for the spiritual - King Arthur in the 19th century; visions and revisions.

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Book SynopsisThe essays in this volume have a common theme and preoccupation: an intention to present medieval women - in life, literature, hagiography and art - as they thought of themselves, teased from the work of theirintermediaries (Hildegard of Bingen, Christine of Pisan) or from the works, words and social milieux of men (Chaucer's women, Chretien's patrons, the empress Theodora and others). Feminea Mediaevalia is designed to foreground feminine and feminist topics and issues in the field of medieval studies. Contributors: DEBORAH EVERHART, STEPHEN STALLCUP, JENNIFER R. GOODMAN, BONNIE WHEELER, JEAN E. JOST, JO GOYNE, RENEÉJUSTICE STANDLEY, DEREK BAKER, SAMUEL LYNDON GLADDEN, PAULA MARTIN, PATRICIA STIRNEMANN, DONNA J. OESTREICH, MARIANNE SINRAM, ELIZABETH NIGHTLINGER, ANN HUTCHISON, MICHAEL HOLAHAN.

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