Literary studies: ancient, classical Books
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Studies in Medievalism XXI: Corporate Medievalism
Book SynopsisEssays on the post-modern reception and interpretation of the middle ages, with a particular focus on its relationship with business and finance. Academia has never been immune to corporate culture, and despite the persistent association of medievalism with escapism, perhaps never has that been more obvious than at the present moment. The six essays that open the volume explore precisely how financial institutions have promoted, distorted, appropriated, resisted, and repudiated post-medieval interpretations of the middle ages. In the second part of the book, contributors explore medievalism in a variety of areas, juxtaposing specific case studies with broader investigations of the discipline's motives and methods; they include Charles Kingsley's racial Anglo-Saxonism, Jessie L. Weston's Sir Gawain and the treatment of womenin medievalist film. The book also includes a spirited response to previous Studies in Medievalism volumes on the topic neomedievalism. Contributors: Harry Brown, Henrik Aubert, Helen Brookman, Pamela Clements, KellyAnnFitzpatrick, Jil Hanifan, Michael R. Kightley, Felice Lifshitz, Lauren S. Mayer, Brent Moberley, Kevin Moberley, E. L. Risden, Carol L. Robinson, M. J. Toswell, J. Rubén Valdés MiyaresTrade ReviewPresents an exciting and thoughtful selection of essays. * MEDIEVAL REVIEW *Table of ContentsEditorial Note - Lives of Total Dedication? Medieval and Modern Corporate Identity - M J Toswell Reincorporating the Medieval: Morality, Chivalry, and Honor in Post-Financial-Meltdown Corporate Revisionism - Brent Moberly Reincorporating the Medieval: Morality, Chivalry, and Honor in Post-Financial-Meltdown Corporate Revisionism - Kevin Moberly Medievalism and Representations of Corporate Identity - Jil Hanifan and KellyAnn Fitzpatrick Knights of the Ownership Society: Economic Inequality and Medievalist Film - Harry Brown A Corporate neo-Beowulf: Ready or Not, Here We Come - E L Risden Unsettled Accounts: Corporate Culture and George R. R. Martin's Fetish Medievalism - Lauryn S. Mayer Historicizing Neumatic Notation: Medieval Neumes as Cultural Artifacts of Early Modern Times - Eduardo Henrik Aubert Hereward the Dane and the English, but Not the Saxon: Kingsley's Racial Anglo-Saxonism - Michael R. Kightley From Romance to Ritual: Jessie L. Weston's Gawain - Helen Brookman The Cinematic Sign of the Grail - J R Valdes Miyares Destructive Dominae: Women and Vengeance in Medievalist Films - Felice Lifshitz Neomedievalism Unplugged - Pamela Clements and Carol Robinson Notes on Contributors
£66.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Performance and the Middle English Romance
Book SynopsisAn examination of if and how medieval romance was performed, uniquely uniting the perspective of a scholar and practitioner. Although English medieval minstrels performed gestes, a genre closely related to romance, often playing the harp or the fiddle, the question of if, and how, Middle English romance was performed has been hotly debated. Here,the performance tradition is explored by combining textual, historical and musicological scholarship with practical experience from a noted musician. Using previously unrecognised evidence, the author reconstructs a realistic model of minstrel performance, showing how a simple melody can interact with the text, and vice versa. She argues that elements in Middle English romance which may seem simplistic or repetitive may in fact be incomplete, as missing an integral musical dimension; metrical irregularities, for example, may be relics of sophisticated rhythmic variation that make sense only with music. Overall, the study offers both a more accurate comprehension of minstrel performance, and a deeper appreciation of the romances themselves. Linda Marie Zaerr is Professor of Medieval Studies at Boise State University.Trade Review[O]ffers the first comprehensive list of references to minstrel performances in the Middle English romances. . . . Zaerr's vivid account . . . provides a strong sense of how much we have lost now that we can only read the romances on the page. * EARLY MUSIC *Offer[s] a fresh perspective on Middle English romances not just as texts but also as performance acts. * COMITATUS 44 *[T]his is a splendid book, presenting a fine collection of textual evidence and commentary, which is a most valuable contribution to the field of medieval musicology. * THE CONSORT *This is a fascinating book, a sort of dialogue between scholar and performer, both being the same person [. . .] stimulating. * EARLY MUSIC REVIEW *With huge experience in performing Middle English romances, Professor Zaerr brings her valuable perspective as a performer to current textual, historical and musicological scholarship, in order to understand better how medieval minstrels performed romances with music. She shows how a broader, more fluid concept of romance can lead us to more profound understanding, and exciting revelations. -- Professor Marilyn Lawrence, New York University.Table of ContentsIntroduction Continental Traditions of Narrative Performance The English Minstrel in History and Romance Musical Instruments and Narrative Meter, Accent, and Rhythm Music and the Middle English Romance Conclusions Appendix A: Minstrel References in the Middle English Verse Romances Appendix B: Medieval Fiddle Tuning and Implications for Narrative Performance Glossary of Terms Bibliography
£76.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Cognitive Approaches to Old English Poetry
Book SynopsisOffers an entirely new way of interpreting and examining Anglo-Saxon texts, via theories derived from cognitive studies. A major, thoughtful study, applying new and serious interpretative and critical perspectives to a central range of Old English poetry. Professor John Hines, Cardiff University Cognitive approaches to literature offernew and exciting ways of interpreting literature and mentalities, by bringing ideas and methodologies from Cognitive Science into the analysis of literature and culture. While these approaches are of particular value in relation to understanding the texts of remote societies, they have to date made very little impact on Anglo-Saxon Studies. This book therefore acts as a pioneer, mapping out the new field, explaining its relevance to Old English Literary Studies, and demonstrating in practice its application to a range of key vernacular poetic texts, including Beowulf, The Wanderer, and poems from the Exeter Book. Adapting key ideas from three related fields - Cognitive Literary/Cultural Studies, Cognitive Poetics, and Conceptual Metaphor Theory - in conjunction with more familiar models, derived from Literary Analysis, Stylistics, and Historical Linguistics, allows several new ways of thinking about Old English literature to emerge. It permits a systematic means of examining and accounting for the conceptual structures that underpin Anglo-Saxon poetics, as well as fuller explorations, at the level of mental processing, of the workings of literary language in context. The result is a set of approaches to interpreting Anglo-Saxon textuality, through detailed studies of the concepts, mental schemas, and associative logic implied in and triggeredby the evocative language and meaning structures of surviving works. ANTONINA HARBUS is Professor in the Department of English at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.Trade ReviewOffers fresh approaches to understanding the contemporary reception of Anglo-Saxon poetry and modern encounters with these texts. * YEAR'S WORK IN ENGLISH STUDIES *Cognitive Approaches to Old English Poetry marks an ambitious foray by Anglo-Saxonist Antonina Harbus into new realms of analysis afforded by the 'cognitive approaches' of her title. It will be of particular interest to those who want to understand the implications of current trends in literary study to embrace the terms and ideas of cognitive science. * THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW *Table of ContentsIntroduction Conceptual Metaphors Conceptual Blending Text World Theory Cognitive Cultural Studies Anglo-Saxon Perspectives on Autobiographical Memory and the Self Cognitive Approaches to the History of Emotions and the Emotional Dynamic of Literature Conclusion Bibliography
£66.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Rethinking Medieval Translation: Ethics,
Book SynopsisEssays examining both the theory and practice of medieval translation. Engaging and informative to read, challenging in its assertions, and provocative in the best way, inviting the reader to sift, correlate and reflect on the broader applicability of points made in reference to a specific text orexchange. Professor Carolyne P. Collette, Mount Holyoke College. Medieval notions of translatio raise issues that have since been debated in contemporary translation studies concerning the translator's role asinterpreter or author; the ability of translation to reinforce or unsettle linguistic or political dominance; and translation's capacity for establishing cultural contact, or participating in cultural appropriation or effacement.This collection puts these ethical and political issues centre stage, asking whether questions currently being posed by theorists of translation need rethinking or revising when brought into dialogue with medieval examples. Contributors explore translation - as a practice, a necessity, an impossibility and a multi-media form - through multiple perspectives on language, theory, dissemination and cultural transmission. Exploring texts, authors, languages and genres not often brought together in a single volume, individual essays focus on topics such as the politics of multilingualism, the role of translation in conflict situations, the translator's invisibility, hospitality, untranslatability and the limits of translation as a category. EMMA CAMPBELL is Associate Professor in French at the University of Warwick; ROBERT MILLS is Lecturer in History of Art at University College London. Contributors: William Burgwinkle, Ardis Butterfield, Emma Campbell, Marilynn Desmond, Simon Gaunt, Jane Gilbert, Miranda Griffin, Noah D. Guynn, Catherine Léglu, Robert Mills, Zrinka Stahuljak, Luke SunderlandTrade ReviewThis wide-ranging and stimulating collection.is thoroughly informed by current work in translation studies and theory. * PARERGON *Will be of obvious use to scholars in medieval studies. * MEDIEVAL REVIEW *[A] sophisticated collection of essays. FORUM FOR MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES, vol. 50, no. 1, January 2014 * FORUM FOR MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES, vol. 50, no. 1, January 2014 *[Produces] fruitful new lines of inquiry into central questions of politics and ethics at the heart of the ongoing enterprise of translation. [...]The collection will richly reward readers from many fields and challenge scholars to continue the new conversations begun here. * COMITATUS 44 *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Rethinking Medieval Translation - Emma Campbell and On Not Knowing Greek: Leonzio Pilatus's Rendition of the Iliad and the Translatio of Mediterranean Identities - Marilynn Desmond Translation and Transformation in the Ovide moralisé - Miranda Griffin Translating Lucretia: Word, Image and 'Ethical Non-Indifference' in Simon de Hesdin's Translation of Valerius Maximus's Facta et dicta memorabilia - Catherine Léglu Translating Catharsis: Aristotle and Averroës, the Scholastics and the Basochiens - Noah D. Guynn The Ethics of Translatio in Rutebeuf's Miracle de Théophile - Emma Campbell Invisible Translation, Language Difference and the Scandal of Becket's Mother - Medieval Fixers: Politics of Interpreting in Western Historiography - Zrinka Stahuljak The Task of the Dérimeur: Benjamin and Translation into Prose in Fifteenth-Century French Literature - Jane Gilbert The Translator as Interpretant: Passing in/on the Work of Ramon Llull - William Burgwinkle Rough Translation: Charles d'Orléans, Lydgate and Hoccleve - Ardis Butterfield Bueve d'Hantone/Bovo d'Antona: Exile, Translation and the History of the Chanson de geste - Luke Sunderland Untranslatable: A Response - Simon Gaunt Bibliography
£80.75
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Pèlerinage Allegories of Guillaume de
Book SynopsisNew essays on the unjustly neglected Pèlerinage works by de Guileville, showing in particular its huge contemporary influence. The fourteenth-century French pilgrimage allegories of Guillaume de Deguileville (or "Digulleville") shaped late medieval and early modern European culture. Portions of the Pèlerinage de Vie Humaine, Pèlerinage de l'Ame and Pèlerinage de Jhesucrist survive in more than eighty medieval manuscripts and translations into English, German, Dutch, Castilian and Latin appeared by the early sixteenth century, along with adaptations into Frenchprose and dramatic forms and numerous early printed editions. This volume furnishes a better understanding of the allegories' circulation, creation and importance from the 1330s into the 1560s, via trans-national, multilingual and interdisciplinary perspectives. The collection's first section, on "Tradition", identifies the patterns that developed as Deguileville's corpus captured the attentions of adaptors, annotators and illustrators. The second section, on "Authority", addresses the cultural context of Deguileville himself, his approach to poetic craft and the status of his French and Latin poetry. The third section, on "Influence", closely examines selected connections between the Pèlerinages and the literary productions of later authors, translators and reading communities, including the French verse of Philippe de Mézières, Castilian print adaptation, and the early modern Croatian novel.Overall, the collection provides a variety of approaches to examining literary reception, attending not only to texts but also to evidence of surviving manuscripts and early printed editions; it offers new insights into a rich and complex allegorical corpus and its impact on European literary history. Marco Nievergelt is a Maître-Assistant in Early English Literature in the English department of the University of Lausanne.Stephanie A. Viereck Gibbs Kamath studies English and French medieval literature, with a particular interest in allegory, translation studies, and the history of the material text. Contributors: Flor Maria Bango de la Campa, Robert L.A. Clark, Graham Robert Edwards, Dolores Grmaca, Andreas Kablitz, John Moreau, Ursula Peters, Fabienne Pomel, Pamela Sheingorn, Sara V. Torres, Géraldine VeysseyreTrade ReviewThe interdisciplinary nature of the essays as well as their wide linguistic, temporal, and geographical compass make this volume an excellent addition to Deguileville criticism. The detailed notes and extensive bibliography provide readers with a solid basis for placing the authors' contributions into the wider context of the recent explosion of Deguileville scholarship. * H-FRANCE *Table of ContentsIntroduction - Marco Nievergelt and Stephanie Kamath The Pèlerinage Corpus: A Tradition of Textual Transformation across Western Europe - Ursula Peters The Pèlerinage Corpus: A Tradition of Textual Transformation across Western Europe - Andreas Kablitz Manuscrits à voir, manuscrits à lire, manuscrits lus: Les marginalia du Pèlerinage de Vie Humaine comme indices de sa réception médiévale - Géraldine Veysseyre Rewriting Joseph in the Life of Christ: The Allegory of the Raptor-Thieves in the Pèlerinage de Jhesucrist - Robert L. A. Clark Rewriting Joseph in the Life of Christ: The Allegory of the Raptor-Thieves in the Pèlerinage de Jhesucrist - Pamela Sheingorn Les écrits pérégrins ou les voies de l'autorité chez Guillaume de Deguileville: le modèle épistolaire et juridique - Fabienne Pomel 'Ce mauvais tabellion': Satan and Marian Textuality in Deguileville's Pèlerinage de l'Ame - John Moreau Making Sense of Deguileville's Autobiographical Project:The Evidence of Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Latin 14845 - Graham Edwards Remembered Pèlerinage: Deguileville's Pilgrim in Philippe de Mézières's Songe du Vieil Pelerin - Sara V. Torres La réception espagnole de Deguileville: El Pelegrino de la vida humana - Flor María Bango de la Campa Body Trouble: The Impact of Deguileville's Allegory of Human Life on Croatian Renaissance Literature - Dolores Grmaca Bibliography
£71.25
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Shaping Courtliness in Medieval France: Essays in
Book SynopsisThe question of what medieval "courtliness" was, both as a literary influence and as a historical "reality", is debated in this volume. The concept of courtliness forms the theme of this collection of essays. Focused on works written in the Francophone world between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, they examine courtliness as both an historical privilege and aliterary ideal, and as a concept that operated on and was informed by complex social and economic realities. Several essays reveal how courtliness is subject to satire or is the subject of exhortation in works intended for noblemen and women, not to mention ambitious bourgeois. Others, more strictly literary in their focus, explore the witty, thoughtful and innovative responses of writers engaged in the conscious process of elevating the new vernacular culture through the articulation of its complexities and contradictions. The volume as a whole, uniting philosophical, theoretical, philological, and cultural approaches, demonstrates that medieval "courtliness" is an ideal that fascinates us to this day. It is thus a fitting tribute to the scholarship of Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, in its exploration of the prrofound and wide-ranging ideas that define her contribution to the field. DANIEL E O'SULLIVAN is Associate Professor of French at the University of Mississippi; LAURIE SHEPHARD is Associate Professor of Italian at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Contributors: Peter Haidu, Donald Maddox, Michel-André Bossy, Kristin Burr, Joan Tasker Grimbert, David Hult, Virgine Greene, Logan Whalen, Evelyn Birge Vitz, Elizabeth W. Poe, Daniel E. O'Sullivan, William Schenck, Nadia Margolis, Laine Doggett, E. Jane Burns, Nancy FreemanRegalado, Laurie Shephard, Sarah WhiteTrade ReviewIn an era when academic presses insist on disguising Festschriften (if they publish them at all) as anything but what they are, D.S. Brewer should be applauded for honoring the genre with so robust an example. Indeed, the volume demonstrates how coherent the breed can be when orchestrated effectively. * H-FRANCE REVIEWS *[A] superbly eclectic but also very coherent collection. * FRENCH STUDIES *[A] rich collection of essays. * MEDIEVAL REVIEW *Table of ContentsIntroduction Matilda Tomaryn: A Bibliography A Perfume of Reality: Desublimating the Courtly - Peter Haidu Shaping the Case: the Olim and the Parlement de Paris under King Louis IX - Donald L Maddox Charles d'Orléans and the Wars of the Roses: Yorkist and Tudor Implications of British Library MS Royal16.F.ii. - Michel-André Bossy Meraugis de Portlesguez and the Limits of Courtliness - Kristin Burr The Art of "Transmutation" in the Burgundian Prose Cligés (1454): Bringing the Siege of Windsor Castle to Life for the Court of Philip the Good - Joan Tasker Grimbert Thomas's Raisun: Désir, Vouloir, Pouvoir - David Hult Humanimals: The Future of Courtliness in the Conte du Papegau - Virginie Greene A Matter of Life or Death: Fecundity and Sterility in Marie de France's Guigemar - Logan E. Whalen Le Roman de la Rose, Performed in Court - Evelyn Birge Vitz Lombarda's Mirrors: Reflections on PC 288,1 as a Response to PC 54,1 - Elizabeth W. Poe Na Maria: Courtliness and Marian Devotion in Old Occitan Lyric - Daniel E. O'Sullivan From Convent to Court: Ermengarde d'Anjou's Decision to Reenter the World - William Schenck From Chrétien to Christine: Translating Twelfth-Century Literature to Reform the French Court during the Hundred Years War - Nadia Margolis The Favorable Reception of Outsiders at Court: Medieval Versions of Cultural Exchange - Laine E Doggett Shapng Saladin: Courtly Men Dressed in Silk - E. Jane Burns Force de parole: Shaping Courtliness in Richard de Fournival's Bestiaire d'amours, Copied in Metz around 1312 (Oxford, Bodl. Ms Duce 308) - Nancy Freeman Regalado The Poetic legacy of Charles d'Anjo in Italy: Aristocratics Poetics in the Comune - Laurie Shepard Envoi - Sarah White
£80.75
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Culture of Inquisition in Medieval England
Book SynopsisGroundbreaking essays show the variety and complexity of the roles played by inquisition in medieval England. Inquisition in medieval and early modern England has typically been the subject of historical rather than cultural investigation, and focussed on heresy. Here, however, inquisition is revealed as playing a broader role in medievalEnglish culture, not only in relation to sanctions like excommunication, penance and confession, but also in the fields of exemplarity, rhetoric and poetry. Beyond its specific legal and pastoral applications, inquisitio was a dialogic mode of inquiry, a means of discerning, producing or rewriting truth, and an often adversarial form of invention and literary authority. The essays in this volume cover such topics as the theory and practice ofcanon law, heresy and its prosecution, Middle English pastoralia, political writing and romance. As a result, the collection redefines the nature of inquisition's role within both medieval law and culture, and demonstrates the extent to which it penetrated the late-medieval consciousness, shaping public fame and private selves, sexuality and gender, rhetoric, and literature. Mary C. Flannery is a lecturer in English at the University of Lausanne; Katie L. Walter is a lecturer in English at the University of Sussex. Contributors: Mary C. Flannery, Katie L. Walter, Henry Ansgar Kelly, Edwin Craun, Ian Forrest, Diane Vincent, Jenny Lee, James Wade, Genelle Gertz, Ruth Ahnert, Emily SteinerTrade ReviewThe essays collected together . . . successfully highlight the tensely creative interrelationship of form of official legal documentary culture and individual authorship in both old and new genres. * JEGP *In their collective approach, the authors explicate the way in which the process of inquiry ('inquisitio') became a judicial and confessional tool whereby ecclesiastical authorities . . . constructed a rationale and accompanying institutions that enabled them to root out and correct errors of belief and practice. * JOURNAL OF CHURCH AND STATE *A valuable collection that offers intriguing insights into understanding medieval inquisition as a complex and dynamic concept not confined to investigations of heresy. * MEDIAEVISTIK 26, 2013 *[A] volume of worthy articles and a welcome contribution to the field. * STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE TEACHING *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Imagining Inquisition - Mary C. Flannery and Katie Louise Walter Inquisition, Public Fame, and Confession: General Rules and English Practice - Henry Ansgar Kelly The Imperatives of Denunciatio: Disclosing Other's Sins to Disciplinary Authorities - Edwin Craun English Provincial Constitutions and Inquisition into Lollardy - Ian Forrest The Contest over the Public Imagination of Inquisition, 1380-1430 - Diane Vincent 'Vttirli Onknowe'? Modes of Inquiry and the Dynamics of Interiority in Vernacular Literature - Mary C. Flannery 'Vttirli Onknowe'? Modes of Inquiry and the Dynamics of Interiority in Vernacular Literature - Katie Louise Walter From Defacement to Restoration: Inquisition, Confession and Thomas Usk's Appeal and Testament of Love - Jenny Lee Confession, Inquisition and Exemplarity in The Erle of Toulous and Other Middle English Romances - James Wade Heresy Inquisition and Authorship, 1400-1560 - Genelle Gertz Imitating Inquisition: Dialectical Bias in Protestant Prison Writings - Ruth Ahnert Response Essay: Chaucer's Inquisition - Emily Steiner
£66.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Violence and the Writing of History in the
Book SynopsisAn examination of medieval historican writings through the prism of violence. The concept of medieval historiography as "usable past" is here challenged and reassessed. The contributors' shared claim is that the value of medieval historiographical texts lies not only in the factual information the texts contain but also in the methods and styles they use to represent and interpret the past and make it ideologically productive. Violence is used as the key term that best demonstrates the making of historical meaning in the Middle Ages, through the transformation of acts of physical aggression and destruction into a memorable and usable past. The twelve chapters assembled here explore a wide range of texts emanating from throughout the francophone world. They cover a range of genres (chansons de geste, histories, chronicles, travel writing, and lyric poetry), and range from the late eleventh to the fifteenth century. Through examination of topics as varied as rhetoric, imagery, humor, gender, sexuality, trauma, subversion, and community formation, each chapter strives to demonstrate how knowledge of the medieval past can be enhanced by approaching medieval modes of historical representation and consciousness on their own terms, and by acknowledging - and resisting - the desire to subject them to modern conceptions of historical intelligibility. Noah D. Guynn is Associate Professor of French at the University of California, Davis; Zrinka Stahuljak is Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. Contributors: Noah D. Guynn, Zrinka Stahuljak, James Andrew Cowell, Jeff Rider,Leah Shopkow, Matthew Fisher, Karen Sullivan, David Rollo, Deborah McGrady, Rosalind Brown-Grant, Simon GauntTrade ReviewA rich and challenging collection, of interest to linguists and historians alike. * MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW, April 2015 *[This] rich and varied collection...will be a useful resource both for undergraduate teaching and for further research in medieval literature, linguistics, history, and cultural studies. * FRENCH STUDIES *Table of ContentsHistoricity, Violence, and the Medieval Francophone World: Mémoire Hystérisée - Noah D. Guynn Historicity, Violence, and the Medieval Francophone World: Mémoire Hystérisée - Zrinka Stahuljak Violence, History, and the Old French Epic of Revolt - Andrew Cowell Rhetoric, Providence, and Violence in Villehardouin's La conquête de Constantinople - Noah D. Guynn Vice, Tyranny, Violence, and the Usurpation of Flanders (1071) in Flemish Historiography from 1093 to 1294 - Jeff Rider Marvelous Feats: Humor, Trickery, and Violence in the History of the Counts of Guines and Lords of Ardres of Lambert of Ardres - Leah Shopkow Dismembered Borders and Treasonous Bodies in Anglo-Norman Historiography - Matthew Fisher The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: Violence in the Canso de la Crozada - Karen Sullivan Political Violence and Sexual Violation in the Work of Benoît de Sainte-Maure - David Rollo The Sexuality of History: The Demise of Hugh Despenser, Roger Mortimer, and Richard II in Jean Le Bel, Jean Froissart, and Jean d'Outremeuse - Zrinka Stahuljak "Guerre ne sert que de tourment": Remembering War in the Poetic Correspondence of Charles d'Orléans - Deborah McGrady Commemorating the Chivalric Hero: Text, Image, Violence, and Memory in the Livre des faits de messire Jacques de Lalaing - Rosalind Brown-Grant Coming Communities in Medieval Francophone Writing about the Orient - Simon Gaunt
£66.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Poetic Voices of John Gower: Politics and
Book SynopsisAn examination of Gower's skilful deployment of personae in his works, showing the parallels between the way he treats love, and the way he treats politics. Gower's use of the persona, the figure of the writer implicated in the text, is the main theme of this book. While it traces the development of Gower's voice through his major works, it concentrates on the dialogue of Amans and Genius in the Confessio Amantis. It argues that Gower negotiates problems of politics and problems of love by means of an analogy between political ethics and the rules of fin amour; Amans and Genius are both drawn from and occupied with amatory and ethical traditions, and their discourse produces a series of attempts to find a coherent and rational union of lover and ruler. The volume also argues that Gower's goal is poetic as well as political: through the personae, Gower's readers experience the pains and pleasures of erotic and social love. Gower's personae voice potential responses to exemplary experience, prompting readers to feel and to judge, and moving them to become better lovers and better rulers. Gower's analogy between fin amour and politics brings the affects of the lover to the action of government, and suggests for both love and rule the moderation that brings peace and joy. Matthew W. Irvin is Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Chair of the Medieval Studies Program at Sewanee.Trade ReviewIrvin's study is wide-ranging, learned, and productive. By encompassing Gower's major works while attending to many divergent aspects of the Confessio, this book has much to offer future readers and scholars of Gowerian poetics. * JOURNAL OF ENGLISH AND GERMANIC PHILOLOGY *Gower scholarship has, to some extent, suffered precisely because of the multilingual nature of Gower's texts, with the bulk of scholarship focusing upon his Middle English Confessio; Irvin's study not only benefits from but revels in that complexity. * MODERN PHILOLOGY *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Making and Doing Love The Inheritance of the Confessio Amantis The Orientation of the Prologue Amorous Persons Pity and the Feminine Labor and Art Alienation and Value The Love of Kings Conclusion: Identifying Amans
£80.75
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England:
Book SynopsisThe series has from the beginning been instrumental in sustaining this field of study. JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY Mystical writing flourished between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries across Europe and in England, and had a wide influence on religion and spirituality. This volume examines a range of topics within the field. The five "Middle English Mystics" (Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe) receive renewed attention, with significant new insights generated by fresh theoretical approaches. In addition, there are studies of the relationships between continental and English mystical authors, introductions to some less well-known writers in the tradition (such as the Monk of Farne), and explorations around the fringes of the mystical canon, including Middle English translations of Boethius, Lollard spirituality, and the Syon brother Richard Whytford's writings for a sixteenth-century "mixed life" audience. E. A. Jones is Senior Lecturer in English Medieval Literature and Culture at the University of Exeter. Contributors: Christine Cooper-Rompato, Vincent Gillespie, C. Annette Grisé, Ian Johnson, Sarah Macmillan, Liz Herbert McAvoy, Nicole R. Rice, Maggie Ross, Steven Rozenski Jr, David Russell, Michael G. Sargent, Christiana Whitehead.Trade ReviewA very valuable collection of essays which touches many aspects of late medieval thought and literary practice, a volume from which medievalists from all walks of life will derive considerable pleasure and profit. * SCRIPTORIUM *Table of ContentsIntroduction - E.A. Jones The Colours of Contemplation: Less Light on Julian of Norwich - Vincent Gillespie Behold Not the Cloud of Experience - Maggie Ross Walter Hilton on the Gift of Interpretation of Scripture - Michael G. Sargent Numeracy and Number in The Book of Margery Kempe - Christine Cooper-Rompato Religious Mystical Mothers: Margery Kempe and Caterina Benincasa - David Russell Authority and Exemplarity in Henry Suso and Richard Rolle - Steven Rozenski Mortifying the Mind: Asceticism, Mysticism and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 114 - Sarah Macmillan The Meditaciones of the Monk of Farne - Christiania Whitehead Envisioning Reform: A Revelation Of Purgatory and Anchoritic Compassioun in the Later Middle Ages - Liz Herbert McAvoy Walton's Heavenly Boece and the Devout Translation of Transcendence: O Qui Perpetua Pietised - Ian Johnson Reformist Devotional Reading: The Pore Caitif in British Library, MS Harley 2322 - Nicole R. Rice Richard Whytford, The Golden Epistle, and the Mixed Life Audience - C. Annette Grise
£71.25
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Honour, Exchange and Violence in Beowulf
Book SynopsisArgues for a new reading of Beowulf in its contemporary context, where honour and violence are intimately linked. This book examines violence in its social setting, and especially as an essential element in the heroic system of exchange (sometimes called the Economy of Honour). It situates Beowulf in a northern European culture where violence was not stigmatized as evidence of a breakdown in social order but rather was seen as a reasonable way to get things done; where kings and their retainers saw themselves above all as warriors whose chief occupation was thepursuit of honour; and where most successful kings were those perceived as most predatory. Though kings and their subjects yearned for peace, the political and religious institutions of the time did little to restrain their violent impulses. Drawing on works from Britain, Scandinavia, and Ireland, which show how the practice of violence was governed by rules and customs which were observed, with variations, over a wide area, this book makes use of historicist and anthropological approaches to its subject. It takes a neutral attitude towards the phenomena it examines, but at the same time describes them fortnightly, avoiding euphemism and excuse-making on the one hand and condemnation on the other. In this it attempts to avoid the errors of critics who have sometimes been led astray by modern assumptions about the morality of violence. PETER S. BAKER is Professor of English at the Universityof Virginia.Trade ReviewAnyone in Beowulf or Anglo-Saxon studies as well as, of course, college and university libraries should get a copy; this book deserves not only careful reading but also regular use. * STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE TEACHING *Fills a notable gap in modern scholarship, providing what will undoubtedly become the standard entry-point for historians keen to build ideas about honour into their work. ... [It] is an engaging, well-argued and important book that will richly reward those historians who attend to it carefully. * ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW *Learned and provocative. * REVIEW OF ENGLISH STUDIES *The best treatment of military and social conflict in Beowulf, which, with its powerful originality and wide horizons, will form a new and welcome landmark in Beowulf studies. * SPECULUM *Table of ContentsPreface Introduction Loot and the Economy of Honour Unferth's Gift The Angel in the Mead Hall Three Queens The Perils of Peacemaking Beowulf's Last Triumph Conclusion Works Cited
£80.75
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Old English Martyrology: Edition, Translation
Book SynopsisNew edition with facing-page translation of a highly significant and influential Old English text. The Old English Martyrology is one of the longest and most important prose texts written in Anglo-Saxon England; it also represents one of the most impressive examples of encyclopaedic writing from the European Middle Ages.Probably intended as a reference work, it was used and transmitted for over 200 years, providing its readers with information on native and foreign saints, time measurement, the seasons of the year, biblical events, and cosmology. Its lively and engaging vignettes illustrate the importance of miracle stories for the early medieval cult of saints. This new edition presents a revised text, with a facing-page, newly-prepared English translation; they are accompanied by a commentary based on a fresh comparison with some 250 Latin and Old English texts, the first published glossary for this text, and extensive bibliographical information and indices. Dr Christine Raueris a Senior Lecturer in the School of English and the Institute of Mediaeval Studies at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.Trade ReviewWinner of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists 2015 Publication Prizes: Best Edition * . *Rauer's edition of OEM does what an edition should: combine a clean, reliable text with a clear, literal translation and ancillary materials that review scholarship, deepen understanding, point out problems, and facilitate future work. . . . It is learned, useful, and stimulating, the product of much expert work, and for most purposes should now be the edition of choice. * STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE TEACHING *Rauer's deep knowledge of and appreciation for all aspects of this work shine through the edition from start to finish, bringing the Martyrology out of the shadows and making it more accessible than ever before.. [This] edition...will be of great use both for novice students of Old English language as well as experts. * MEDIAEVISTIK *This is an important and diligently executed book; and it is arranged to facilitate reference-whatever one is looking for is easy to find. It is a work of reference for martyrology in the first place, and it will be found useful for many other related subjects. * NOTES & QUERIES *Rauer's edition...is an important and welcome contribution, sure to stimulate new research. * MEDIUM AEVUM *Any scholar interested in the Martyrology will need, at least, to refer to this edition. * TOEBI NEWSLETTER *A valuable contribution that will appeal to a range of readers....This will certainly be the standard text to turn to...for at least the next generation of research.... The commentary is excellent. * JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY *Rauer has done a service not only to scholars of Old English and to the text she has edited, but to anyone interested in issues such as the interface of Latin and the vernacular, ninth-century English religious and intellectual culture, early medieval ideas of sex and gender, liturgy and hagiography, and formations of knowledge and identity in the early Middle Ages and more. The OEM will undoubtedly find wider and productive readership in this new edition. * SPECULUM *Christine Rauer has done an excellent job of providing an accurate edition and translation plus a mass of up-to-date elucidation and references to published research for a text with so rich, large, and diverse a history in its hinterland. * FOLKLORE *Everyone from the most seasoned expert to the total neophyte will be able to benefit from the volume, which should immediately become both an indispensable research tool for the specialist and a stimulating way to introduce undergraduates (and even some members of the general reading public) to a broad range of medieval ideas about saints and sanctity. * THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW *Table of ContentsIntroduction Sigla Text and Translation Commentary Appendices
£85.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Refrain and the Rise of the Vernacular in
Book SynopsisA survey of the use of the refrain in thirteenth and fourteenth-century French music and poetry, showing how it was skilfully deployed to assert the validity of the vernacular. The relationship between song quotation and the elevation of French as a literary language that could challenge the cultural authority of Latin is the focus of this book. It approaches this phenomenon through a close examination of the refrain, a short phrase of music and text quoted intertextually across thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century musical and poetic genres. The author draws on a wide range of case studies, from motets, trouvère song, plays, romance, vernacular translations, and proverb collections, to show that medieval composers quoted refrains as vernacular auctoritates; she argues that their appropriation of scholastic, Latinate writing techniques workedto authorize Old French music and poetry as media suitable for the transmission of knowledge. Beginning with an exploration of the quasi-scholastic usage of refrains in anonymous and less familiar clerical contexts, the book goeson to articulate a new framework for understanding the emergence of the first two named authors of vernacular polyphonic music, the cleric-trouvères Adam de la Halle and Guillaume de Machaut. It shows how, by blending their craftwith the writing practices of the universities, composers could use refrain quotation to assert their status as authors with a new self-consciousness, and to position works in the vernacular as worthy of study and interpretation. Jennifer Saltzstein is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Oklahoma.Trade ReviewA major contribution to scholarship on thirteenth- and fourteenth-century French music and literature in many respects. * MODERN LANGUAGE REVIE *[A] compelling study. * SPECULUM *This book is as accessible to the non-specialist as it is valuable to the expert, carefully explaining any technical vocabulary and precisely clarifying terminological distinctions ... Saltzstein's detailed engagement with musical examples is particularly welcome ... Offers important new contexts in which to understand practices of refrain quotation ... will prove invaluable to musicologists as well as scholars of medieval French literature and culture. * EARLY MUSIC *This fascinating and thought-provoking study sheds light on the intellectual and artistic contexts in which refrain quotation was practiced. * FRENCH STUDIES *An admirable study, with much to say about the closely intertwined, highly experimental and extremely sophisticated medieval literary and musical cultures in which refrains were so liberally used ... this book is of great value for any performer of medieval music. * THE CONSORT *Absorbing and informative ... vital reading for everyone working on medieval motets, songs or poetry ... The overall achievement of this volume is great. * PLAINSONG AND MEDIEVAL MUSIC COLLECTIONS THE BRITISH LIBRARY *Table of ContentsIntroduction Relocating the Refrain Clerical and Monastic Contexts for the Intertextual Refrain Vernacular Wisdom and Thirteenth-Century Arrageois Song Adam de la Halle as Magister Amoris Cultivating an Authoritative Vernacular in the Music of Guillaume de Machaut Conclusion Bibliography
£66.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd John Gower and the Limits of the Law
Book SynopsisAn examination of the ways in which Gower's poetry engages with contemporary law and legal questions. It has long been thought that John Gower was probably a lawyer before turning to poetry, and this study reveals his active engagement with contemporary legal debates; they include constitutional questions, jurisdictional issues, private vengeance, jurisprudential concepts (such as equity and the rigor iuris), and aspects of criminal law. The author argues that the Confessio Amantis in particular demonstrates Gower's uncertainty about how to reconcile the ideal of a just law with alternative modes of justice, such as self-help, royal discretion, and divine will. The book also examines the parallel development of the exemplum and casus in medieval literature. Exempla frequently create a sense of narrative closure by means of some form of punishment, or as Gower would put it, "vengeance". How then do we set Gower's reputation as a sympathetic writer alongside his frequent desire forclosure and punishment? What are the limits of exemplarity and law? These questions are answered by reading Gower in relation to the volatile politics of the Ricardian period, and in comparison with the poetic concerns of contemporary writers such as Chaucer and Langland. In so doing, the book provides a searching introduction to the intersection between literature and law in the late fourteenth century. Dr. Conrad van Dijk is Assistant Professor of English at Concordia University College of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada).Trade ReviewJohn Gower and the Limits of the Law has much to offer readers interested in medieval English law and literature; Gower is its focus, but its ambitions are much larger. This study seeks to move legal literary analysis beyond the (very important) detailing of terminology, and beyond thick historicist reading, toward a place where form and legal matter coalesce. * RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY *[B]ased on the extent to which van Dijk can articulate Gower's thinking in terms of legal discourse and theory, if Gower did not practice law, perhaps he should have. * THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW *In its lively prose style and focus on some of the most intriguing legal issues of all time, or at least those that have come down to us in literary form, Van Dijk not only gives us much to think about, but he makes the deliberation of each case stimulating and engaging. * SPECULUM *Conrad Van Dijk offers here a thorough exploration of Gower's interest in the literary treatment of the law and legal issues of his time. ...Van Dijk provides us with the close readings from which we can derive our own inferences. Thus, his book could prove an excellent catalyst for class discussion. * STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE TEACHING *Table of ContentsIntroduction The Exemplum and the Legal Case Asking Legal Questions in Gower's Confessio Amantis The King in his Empire Reigns Supreme Kingship and Law in Gower's Mirror for Princes Desiring Closure: Gower and Retributive Justice Conclusion: The Trials of Exemplary Legal Fiction
£71.25
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Castration and Culture in the Middle Ages
Book SynopsisEssays exploring medieval castration, as reflected in archaeology, law, historical record, and literary motifs. Castration and castrati have always been facets of western culture, from myth and legend to law and theology, from eunuchs guarding harems to the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century castrati singers. Metaphoric castration pervadesa number of medieval literary genres, particularly the Old French fabliaux - exchanges of power predicated upon the exchange or absence of sexual desire signified by genitalia - but the plain, literal act of castration and its implications are often overlooked. This collection explores this often taboo subject and its implications for cultural mores and custom in Western Europe, seeking to demystify and demythologize castration. Its subjects includearchaeological studies of eunuchs; historical accounts of castration in trials of combat; the mutilation of political rivals in medieval Wales; Anglo-Saxon and Frisian legal and literary examples of castration as punishment; castration as comedy in the Old French fabliaux; the prohibition against genital mutilation in hagiography; and early-modern anxieties about punitive castration enacted on the Elizabethan stage. The introduction reflects on these topics in the context of arguably the most well-known victim of castration in the middle ages, Abelard. LARISSA TRACY is Associate Professor of Medieval Literature at Longwood University. Contributors: Larissa Tracy, Kathryn Reusch, Shaun Tougher, Jack Collins, Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, Jay Paul Gates, Charlene M. Eska, Mary A. Valante, Anthony Adams, Mary E. Leech, Jed Chandler, Ellen Lorraine Friedrich, Robert L.A. Clark, Karin Sellberg, LenaWånggrenTrade ReviewAnyone interested in the multiple premodern meanings of castration will enjoy this morbidly fascinating collection; it deserves the attention of all who work on ancient, medieval or early modern masculinities. * REVIEW OF ENGLISH STUDIES *Each contribution is equally engaging and provides an account that can be read as a stand-alone work; likewise, read in conjunction, the fourteen essays sit well together to provide a detailed picture of castration in medieval society. * PARERGON *Its wide temporal and geographical range, its sheaf of disciplinary approaches, make Castration and Culture a valuable collection and one that achieves a notable coherence. * ÓENACH *Table of ContentsIntroduction: A History of Calamities: The Culture of Castration - Larissa Tracy Raised Voices: The Archaeology of Castration - Kathryn Reusch The Aesthetics of Castration: The Beauty of Roman Eunuchs - Shaun Tougher Appropriation and Development of Castration as Symbol and Practice in Early Christianity - Jack Collins 'Al defouleden is holie bodi': Castration, the Sexualization of Torture, and Anxieties of Identity in the South English Legendary - Larissa Tracy The Children He Never Had; The Husband She Never Served: Castration and Genital Mutilation in Medieval Frisian Law - Rolf H. Bremmer The Fulmannod Society: Social Valuing of the (Male) Legal Subject - Jay Paul Gates 'Imbrued in their owne bloud': Castration in Early Welsh and Irish Sources - Charlene Eska Castrating Monks: Vikings, the Slave Trade, and the Value of Eunuchs - Mary A. Valante 'He took a stone away': Castration and Cruelty in the Old Norse Sturlunga saga - Anthony Adams The Castrating of the Shrew: The Performance of Masculinity and Masculine Identity in La dame escolliee - Mary E Leech Eunuchs of the Grail - Jed Chandler Insinuating Indeterminate Gender: A Castration Motif in Guillaume de Lorris's Romans de la rose - Ellen Lorraine Friedrich Culture Loves a Void: Eunuchry in Eunuchry in De Vetula and Jean Le Fèvre's La Vieille - Robert L. A. Clark The Dismemberment of Will: Early Modern Fear of Castration - Lena Wånggren and Karin Sellberg
£96.13
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Marco Polo's Le Devisement du Monde: Narrative
Book SynopsisThe first book in English to examine one of the most important and influential texts from a literary perspective. Le Devisement du Monde (1298), better though inaccurately known in English as Marco Polo's Travels, is one of only a handful of medieval texts that remain iconic today for European cultural history, and Marco Polo is one of only a handful of medieval writers who still enjoys instant name-recognition. Yet there is little awareness of the Devisement's complex history and development. This book examines the text from a fresh, literary viewpoint, drawing upon a range of different disciplines and approaches: philology, manuscript studies, narratology, cultural history, postcolonial studies and theory. It contains comparative readings of multiple versions of the text in French, Italian and Latin, Rather than offering a Eurocentric vision of the world grounded in a sense of the absolute alterity of the non-Christian world as is often asserted, the author shows how the Devisement expounds a sense of the relative nature of difference, crucially positioning Marco uncannily between two worlds (East and West), just as he is positioned awkwardly between two languages, French and Italian, and (in modern reception at least) awkwardly between two literary histories. The author also calls into question traditional accounts of the use of French outside France in the Middle Ages and offers a re-assessment of Marco Polo's position in the evolution of European travel writing. SIMON GAUNT was Professor of French Language and Literature at King's College London.Trade ReviewIn this ground-clearing study, Gaunt cuts through thickets of scholarship, much of it obfuscatory, to bring us a fresh vision. ... Its insights make it indispensable to any future study of Marco Polo. * MEDIEVAL REVIEW *Simon Gaunt's scholarship in this book is, in a word closely associated with his subject, a marvel. Astute and entertaining [his book] thoroughly merits a place in the medievalist's library. * COMITATUS *[This] excellent study of Marco Polo's Devisement du monde provides both an introduction to controversies and complexities that have beset the study of this text in modern times, and an analysis of key aspects of the text. ... [It is] a valuable contribution to the study of Marco Polo specifically, and, more generally, of medieval concepts of linguistic, religious, and cultural alterity, and of European fantasies and knowledge of the Far East. * MEDIUM AEVUM *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Le Devisement du Monde: textual tradition and genre Narrative voice and style: 'ego Marcus Paulo' Language and translation: 'in lingua Galica dicitur' Knowledge, marvels and other religions: 'oculis propriis videt' Diversity and alterity: 'diversarum regionum mundanas diversitates' Conclusion: 'et ipse non notavit nisi pauca aliqua, que adhuc in mente retinebat' Bibliography
£66.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Traditions and Innovations in the Study of
Book SynopsisEssays on the many key aspects of medieval literature, reflecting the significant impact of Professor Derek Brewer. Derek Brewer (1923-2008) was one of the most influential medievalists of the twentieth century, first through his own publications and teaching, and later as the founder of his own academic publishing firm. His working life of some sixty years, from the late 1940s to the 2000s, saw enormous advances in the study of Chaucer and of Arthurian romance, and of medieval literature more generally. He was in the forefront of such changes, and his understandings ofChaucer and of Malory remain at the core of the modern critical mainstream. Essays in this collection take their starting point from his ideas and interests, before offering their own fresh thinking in those key areas of medieval studies in which he pioneered innovations which remain central: Chaucer's knight and knightly virtues; class-distinction; narrators and narrative time; lovers and loving in medieval romance; ideals of feminine beauty; love,friendship and masculinities; medieval laughter; symbolic stories, the nature of romance, and the ends of storytelling; the wholeness of Malory's Morte Darthur; modern study of the medieval material book; Chaucer's poetic language and modern dictionaries; and Chaucerian afterlives. This collection builds towards an intellectual profile of a modern medievalist, cumulatively registering how the potential of Derek Brewer's work is being reinterpreted and is renewing itself now and into the future of medieval studies. Charlotte Brewer is Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford University and a Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford; Barry Windeatt is Professor of English in the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Contributors: Elizabeth Archibald, Charlotte Brewer, Mary Carruthers, Christopher Cannon, Helen Cooper, A.S.G. Edwards, Jill Mann, Alastair Minnis, Derek Pearsall, Corinne Saunders, James Simpson, A.C. Spearing, Jacqueline Tasioulas, Robert Yeager, Barry Windeatt.Trade ReviewChapter 12, 'The Ends of Storytelling' . . . by [Helen] Cooper is exemplary for its simplicity and clarity. Few scholarly works are so fascinating that they thrust the reader ahead of himself to find out what is coming next. Cooper has written a page-turner. * STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE TEACHING *Table of ContentsIntroduction: A Modern Medievalist's Career Derek Brewer: Chaucerian Studies 1953-1978 - Derek Pearsall Brewer's Chaucer and the Knightly Virtues - Alastair J Minnis Class Distinction and the French of England - Christopher Cannon Time in Troilus and Criseyde - A C Spearing *** Virtue, Intention and the Mind's Eye in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde - Mary Carruthers Falling in Love in the Middle Ages - Jill Mann The Idea of Feminine Beauty in Troilus and Criseyde, or Criseyde's Eyebrow - Jacqueline Tasioulas 'Greater Love hath no Man': Friendship in Medieval English Romance - Corinne Saunders Gowerian Laughter - Robert F. Yeager Derek Brewer's Romance - James Simpson Malory and Late Medieval Arthurian Cycles - Elizabeth Archibald The Ends of Storytelling - Helen Cooper Manuscripts, Facsimiles and Approaches to Editing - A S G Edwards Words and Dictionaries: OED, MED and Chaucer - Charlotte Brewer Afterlives: The Fabulous History of Venus - Barry A Windeatt Afterword - Eric G. Stanley Bibliography
£80.75
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Studies in Medievalism XXII: Corporate
Book SynopsisEssays on the post-modern reception and interpretation of the Middle Ages, with a particular focus on its relationship with business and finance. In the wake of the many passionate responses to its predecessor, Studies in Medievalism 22 also addresses the role of corporations in medievalism. Amid the three opening essays, Amy S. Kaufman examines how three modern novelists have refracted contemporary corporate culture through an imagined and highly dystopic Middle Ages. On either side of that paper, Elizabeth Emery and Richard Utz explore how the Woolworth Company and Google have variously promoted, distorted, appropriated, resisted, and repudiated post-medieval interpretations of the Middle Ages. And Clare Simmons expands on that approach in a full-length article on the Lord Mayor's Show in London. Readers are then invited to find other permutations of corporate influence in six articles on the gendering of Percy's Reliques, the Romantic Pre-Reformation in Charles Reade's The Cloister and the Hearth, renovation and resurrection in M.R. James's "Episode of Cathedral History", salvation in the Commedia references of Rodin's Gates of Hell, film theory and the relationship of the Sister Arts to the cinematic Beowulf, and American containment culture in medievalist comic-books. While offering close, thorough studies of traditional media and materials, the volume directly engages timely concerns about the motives and methods behind this field and many others inacademia. Karl Fugelso is Professor of Art History at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland. Contributors: Aida Audeh, Elizabeth Emery, Katie Garner, Nickolas Haydock, Amy S. Kaufman, Peter W. Lee, Patrick J. Murphy, Fred Porcheddu, Clare A. Simmons, Mark B. Spencer, Richard Utz.Table of ContentsEditorial Note - The Corporate Gothic in New York's Woolworth Building: Medieval Branding in the Original "Cathedral of Commerce" - Elizabeth Emery Our Future is Our Past: Corporate Medievalism in Dystopian Fiction - Amy S. Kaufman The Good Corporation? Google's Medievalism and Why It Matters - Richard Utz "Longest, oldest, and most popular": Medievalism in the Lord Mayor's Show - Clare A Simmons Gendering Percy's Reliques: Ancient Ballads and the Making of Women's Arthurian Writing - Katie Garner Romancing the Pre-Reformation: Charles Reade's The Cloister and the Hearth - Mark B. Spencer Renovation and Resurrection in M. R. James's "Episode of CathedralHistory" - Patrick J. Murphy and Fred Porcheddu Rodin's Gates of Hell and Dante's Inferno 7: Fortune, the Avaricious and Prodigal, and the Question of Salvation - Aida Audeh Film Theory, the Sister Arts Tradition, and the Cinematic Beowulf - Nickolas Haydock Red Days, Black Knights: Medieval-themed Comic Books in American Containment Culture - Peter W. Lee
£66.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The English Clown Tradition from the Middle Ages
Book SynopsisA new account of medieval and Renaissance clown traditions reveals the true extent of their cultural influence. From the late-medieval period through to the seventeenth century, English theatrical clowns carried a weighty cultural significance, only to have it stripped from them, sometimes violently, by the close of the Renaissance when the famed "license" of fooling was effectively revoked. This groundbreaking survey of clown traditions in the period looks both at their history, and reveals their hidden cultural contexts and legacies; it has far-reaching implications not only for our general understanding of English clown types, but also their considerable role in defining social, religious and racial boundaries. It begins with an exploration of previously un-noted early representations of blackness in medieval psalters, cycle plays, and Tudor interludes, arguing that they are emblematic of folly and ignorance rather than of evil. Subsequent chapters show how protestants at Cambridge and at court, during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward, patronised a clownish, iconoclastic Lord of Misrule; look at the Elizabethan puritan stage clown; and move on to a provocative reconsideration of the Fool in King Lear, drawing completely fresh conclusions. Finally, the epilogue points to the satirical clowning which took place surreptitiously in the Interregnum, and the (sometimes violent) end of "licensed" folly. Professor ROBERT HORNBACK teaches in the Departments of Literature and Theatre at Oglethorpe University.Trade ReviewHornback's highly original approach works; he offers a balanced, thorough analysis of the ideological underpinnings of a heretofore lost tradition of early English satirical clowning that manages to restore the historical complexity that New Historicists' readings frequently simplified. Moreover, the wealth of close readings combined with his use of many colorful primary texts renders this richly complex yet ultimately accessible work appropriate to scholar and student alike. * MEDIAEVISTIK *Persuasive, and most valuable to all interested in the antic, buffoonish, or satirical characters of the Renaissance stage. * SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY *An important study. * CHRONIQUE *This is a valuable and very welcome study on a sorely neglected subject. What it demonstrates with admirable clarity is how mobile and heterogeneous this staple of early modern comedy could be. * MEDIUM AEVUM *A fascinating book filled with important revelations. [It] is admirable in its breadth of vision and its specificity and [it] challenges some long-held assumptions. * COMPARATIVE DRAMA, November 2010 *Provides an enlightening and thought-provoking account of the somewhat over-determined subject of the English stage clown. [...] It also sheds some significant light on the workings of the nascent professional theatre which clearly depended on a ludic repertoire in order to underpin and ensure both public and private patronage. Hornback's book shows, however, that clowning and the comic tradition was not only an outlet for social tensions, or comic relief [...] but also a source and arena for important political, religious, and ideological discourse. * NOTES AND QUERIES *[A] useful, clearly written book. * ENGLISH STUDIES *Offers a significant rethinking of early modern English clown traditions and how they interact and represent tensions within Renaissance culture. * CHOICE *Makes a valuable addition to the scholarly literature on early modern clowning, especially for its welcome focus on religion and race. * RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY *With fascinating detail on virtually every page of this book, [the author] has produced a kind of academic page-turner. The English Clown Tradition deserves to be held in very high regard. * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *Table of ContentsIntroduction. Unearthing Yoricks: Literary Archaeology and the Ideologies of Early English Clowning Folly as Proto-Racism: Blackface in the "Natural" Fool Tradition "Sports and Follies Against the Pope": Tudor Evangelical Lords of Misrule "Verie Devout Asses": Ignorant Puritan Clows The Fool "by Art": The All-Licensed "Artificial" Fool in the King Lear Quarto Epilogue. License Revoked: Ending an Era
£23.75
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Fatherhood and its Representations in Middle
Book SynopsisThe figure and role of the late-medieval father is reappraised through a close reading of a range of documents from the period, including both letters and romances. Late medieval English society placed great weight on the practices of primogeniture, patrilineal descent, and patriarchal government, and the significance of the father had cultural resonance beyond the rule of law. Yet despite aburgeoning interest in both the family and gender, "the father" has to date received little attention from medievalists. This book takes an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of the "fictions" of fatherhood, the ideological constructs that underpinned late medieval conceptions of fathers and patriarchy. Its focus on gentry and mercantile readers and writers also offers new insights into the literary culture of late medieval England by considering how texts were produced and received within gentry and bourgeois communities, and demonstrates the ability of texts to not only reflect but also shape hegemonic norms and cultural anxieties. Through close examination of late medieval letters and romances, it shows how the father was the dominant figure not only of medieval domestic life, but also of the medieval imagination. Dr RACHEL E. MOSS is a Lecturer in History at the University of Northampton.Trade ReviewA convincing and welcome book that will profit anyone interested in European family history, romances, letters, English gentry, literature, or masculinity. * MEDIEVAL REVIEW *I enjoyed Moss's respective analyses of the letters and of the romances; she deftly handles a wide variety of sources and certainly demonstrates her abilities as a literary critic and an historian. * SPECULUM *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Fictions of Fatherhood Situating Fathers: The Cultural Context Becoming a Father, Becoming a Man Fathers and Sons Fathers and Daughters False Fathers? Conclusion: Beyond Fatherhood Appendix I: Gentry and Merchant Families Appendix II: Romance Summaries
£66.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Romance and its Contexts in Fifteenth-Century
Book SynopsisExamination of romance texts from late medieval England, linking them firmly to their political and social context. Although the anonymous pious Middle English romances and Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur have rarely been studied in relation to each other, they in fact share at least two thematic concerns, vocabularies of suffering andgenealogical concerns, as this book demonstrates. By examining a broad cultural and political framework stretching from Richard II's deposition to the end of the Wars of the Roses through the prism of piety, politics and penitence, the author draws attention to the specific circumstances in which Sir Isumbras, Sir Gowther, Roberd of Cisely, Henry Lovelich's History of the Holy Grail and Malory's Morte were read in fifteenth-century England. In the case of the pious romances this implies a study of their reception long after their original composition or translation centuries earlier; in Lovelich's case, an examination of metropolitan culture leads to an opening of the discussion to French romance models as well as English chronicle writing. Overall romance reception is investigated through analysis of the manuscript transmission and circulation of these texts alongside contemporary devotional and political texts and chronicles. Dr Raluca Radulescu is Reader in Medieval Literature and Co-Director, Institute for Medieval & Early Modern Studies, Bangor and Aberystwyth Universities.Trade ReviewThis is an important book that should be read by anyone interested in late medieval English literature and culture, especially--but not limited to--romance and Arthuriana. * ARTHURIANA *Table of ContentsPreface Fifteenth-century Contexts for the Reading of Middle English Romances Spiritual Journeys through Political Realities: the 'Pious' Romances Chronicling Britain's Christian Conversion: Henry Lovelich's History of the Holy Grail The Politics of Salvation in Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur Afterword Appendices Bibliography
£71.25
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Two Ælfric Texts: The Twelve Abuses and The
Book SynopsisText with facing translation of two important Old English texts. The texts edited in this volume are Ælfric's vernacular versions of two highly influential early medieval ethical treatises. The first, De duodecim abusiuis, is his Old English version of a seventh-century Hiberno-Latin tract dealing with the twelve abuses of the world. The second, De octo uitiis et de duodecim abusiuis, is a composite text; it combines a treatment of the eight vices and the complementary eight virtues, also found as the lastpart of Ælfric's Lives of Saints XVI, with the twelve abuses. The main source for the virtues and vices is Alcuin's ninth-century De uirtutibus et uitiis. Both texts were composed in Ælfric's hallmark rhythmical, alliterative prose. This new edition provides, for the first time, critical editions of both texts, with a facing translation, presented with full apparatus; it also includes an extensive discussion of the sources and how theyare treated. MARY CLAYTON is Professor of Old and Middle English, University College Dublin.Trade ReviewThis is a valuable book, not only for its presentation and reanalysis of an overlooked pair of texts, but for its exceptionally careful consideration of the Latin texts on which Ælfric relied, which are discussed here in almost as much depth as the vernacular texts themselves. Two Ælfric Texts is an excellent addition to the growing body of work on this important figure. * THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW *These two tracts had been underserved in previous scholarship, a deficit that Clayton amply remedies in the present volume. Clayton provides an edition of each tract alongside a parallel translation; a substantial introduction with details on the manuscripts, a useful account of the traditions, and extensive tracing of the sources; and an edition of the Latin De duodecim abusiuis as an appendix, drawn from a single twelfth-century English manuscript that preserves a text like that which served Ælfric as his source. * SPECULUM *Will no doubt be the standard edition of these two texts for many years. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsEditorial Conventions The Old English Manuscripts and the Transmission of the Texts The Two Versions of the Old English Text: Authorship and Dates De duodecim abusiuis The Vices and Virtues Editorial Introduction to De duodecim abusiuis De duodecim abusiuis Notes to De duodecim abusiuis Editorial Introduction to De octo uitiis et de duodecim abusiuis gradus De octo uitiis et de duodecim abusiuis gradus Notes to De octo uitiis et de duodecim abusiuis Appendix: Latin De duodecim abusiuis [Oxford, Jesus College, MS 3] Bibliography
£66.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Heroines of the French Epic: A second selection
Book SynopsisThe epic tales of medieval France, called chansons de geste, or "songs of deeds", provided the chief means of cultural and imaginative expression in the French language for over one hundred and fifty years (c.1100-1250), during one of the most significant periods of social change in the history of Western civilisation. Yet they remain largely unknown to most English-speaking readers of the twenty-first century. In Heroes of the Old French Epic (Boydell, 2005) Michael Newth translated a selection of the traditional militaristic narratives dominated by male heroes. This oral-based epic genre was increasingly influenced by the ethos of romance, and the present volumeoffers full English verse translations of six more of these songs, each chosen this time to illustrate the range of roles gradually accorded to women in these originally militaristic narratives. Four key narrative roles have beenselected - woman as helpmeet, woman as lover, woman as victim, and woman as spiritual model - in order to illustrate some major changes in the social status of women that took place during the period of this popular genre's existence. These poems are a key witness to the final stages of the chansons de geste before they were overtaken by the new fashion for the fictions of courtly romance. Apart from "The Capture of Orange", which has never been translated into modern English verse, none of the poems have yet appeared in English translation.Trade ReviewThis is a book that should have a key place on the shelves of all keen medievalists and anyone interested in French literature....Newth is a skilled and experienced translator of the genre: this edition is highly recommended. * PARERGON *Michael Newth's volume constitutes a companion to his Heroes of the Old French Epic. . . . As such, the volume contributes to our awareness of changes within the social status of women in the period concerned (the translations here date from 1150 to 1270) and also to the study of the changing form and content of the original orally composed epic poems. * SPECULUM *Newth's vast understanding of heroine identification, coupled with his seamless translations of this elegant prose, proves to be a much welcome addition to modern gendered scholarship. * FRENCH HISTORY *'...an interesting collection for those interested in the genre or in women in medieval France. * CHOICE *
£108.19
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Arthurian Literature XXX
Book SynopsisArthurian Literature has established its position as the home for a great diversity of new research into Arthurian matters. It delivers fascinating material across genres, periods, and theoretical issues. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT The richness and interdisciplinarity of the Arthurian tradition are well represented by the essays collected here, which range from early Celtic texts to twentieth-century children's books, and include discussion of Welsh, Irish,English, French and Latin material in both literary and historical contexts. Many of the articles focus on less well-known late medieval versions of the legend, a somewhat neglected area until recently: an Irish Grail narrative, the Burgundian prose Erec, the enormous prequel Perceforest, Ysaïe le Triste, Le Conte du Papegau, and Froissart's Mélyador (the last three discussed as exercises in nostalgia). Meanwhile, anotherchapter approaches Sir Gawain and the Green Knight from the perspective of forest ecology. The contributions represent expanded and revised versions of selected papers given at the XXIIIrd Triennial Congress of the International Arthurian Society held in Bristol in July 2011; they include two of the plenary lectures, one on "Celtic Magic" and one on the reception of Geoffrey of Monmouth in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Elizabeth Archibald is Professor of English Studies at Durham University, and Principal of St Cuthbert's Society; David F. Johnson is Professor of English at Florida State University, Tallahassee. Contributors: Richard Barber, Nigel Bryant, Aisling Byrne, Carol J. Chase, Siân Echard, Helen Fulton, Michael W. Twomey, Patricia Victorin.Trade ReviewThe editors have good reason to pride themselves on their wide-ranging selection of papers that provide interesting new approaches and discussions on less well-known later medieval versions of the legend. * ENGLISH STUDIES *Table of ContentsMagic and the Supernatural in Early Welsh Arthurian Narrative: Culhwch ac Olwen and Breuddwyd Rhonabwy - Helen Fulton How Green was the Green Knight? Forest Ecology at Hautdesert - Michael W. Twomey Edward III's Arthurian Enthusiasms Revisited: Perceforest in the Context of Philippa of Hainault and the Round Table Feast of 1344 - Richard Barber Pagan Gods and the Coming of Christianity in Perceforest - Nigel Bryant Malory's Sources for the Tale of the Sankgreal: Some Overlooked Evidence from the Irish Lorgaireacht an Tsoidigh Naomhtha - Aisling Byrne 'Transmuer de rime en prose': The Transformation of Chrétien de Troyes's Joie de la Cour episode in the Burgundian Prose Erec [1450-60] - Carol Chase La Rétro-écriture ou l'écriture de la nostalgie dans le roman arthurien tardif: Ysaïe le Triste, Le Conte du Papegau et Mélyador de Froissart - Patricia Victorin Remembering Brutus: Aaron Thompson's British History of 1718 - Sian Echard
£66.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Trojan Legend in Medieval Scottish Literature
Book SynopsisFirst full-length treatment of the Trojan legend in medieval Scottish literature, showing the various uses for, and the ways in, which it was deployed. The Trojan legend became hot property during the Anglo-Scots Wars of Independence. During the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, the English traced their ancestry to Brutus and the Trojans and used this origin myth tobolster their claims to lordship and ownership of Scotland; while in a game of political one-upmanship, and in order to prove Scotland's independence and sovereignty, Scottish historians instead traced their nation's origins to aGreek prince, Gaythelos, and his Egyptian wife, Scota. Despite the wealth of scholarship on the Trojan legend in English and European literature, very little has been done on Scotland's literary response to the same legend,even though a mere glance at the canonical material of late medieval Scotland indicates that it remained equally current north of the Border, a gap which this book fills. Through a detailed analysis of a range of Older Scots textsfrom c. 1375 to c. 1513, notably The Scottish Troy Book, Henryson's Testament of Cresseid, and Douglas' Eneados, it provides the first comprehensive assessment of the Scottish response to the Trojan legend. It considers the way in which Scottish texts interact with English counterparts, such as Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia, Chaucer's Troilus, Lydgate's Troy Book, and Caxton's Eneydos, and demonstrates how despite - or perhaps because of - its use in the Anglo-Scots Wars of Independence, the Trojan legend was for the most part neither neglected nor pejoratively treated in Older Scots literature. Rather, the Matter of Troy and related Matter of Greece were used not just as an origin myth, but also as a metaphor for Anglo-Scots political relations, guide to good governance, and locus through which poets might explore broader issues of literary tradition, authority, and the nature of poetic truth. Emily Wingfield is a lecturer in English at the University of Birmingham.Trade Review[P]rovides a useful synopsis of Scottish response to the myth of Troy during the manuscript and early print eras. * SCOTIA *A comprehensive guide to a fascinating body of work. * JOURNAL OF THE EDINBURGH BIBLIOGRAPHICAL Society vol. 9, 2014 *Table of ContentsIntroduction Troy in the Older Scots Historical Tradition Troy in the Older Scots Romance and Nine Worthies Tradition The Scottish Troy Book Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and Henryson's Testament of Cresseid Gavin Douglas' Eneados Conclusion Appendix
£71.25
Boydell & Brewer Ltd John the Baptist's Prayer or The Descent into
Book SynopsisEdition, translation and full critical study of a hitherto marginalised text, bringing it to full attention for the first time. The Old English poem known popularly as the Descent into Hell, found on folios 119v to 121v of the Exeter Book, has to date received little critical attention, perhaps owing to various contextual problems and lacunae on theleaves that contain it. This first full-length study offers a full account of the poem, together with an edition of the text and facing translation. It aims to resolve some of the poem's vexing issues and provides a varietyof possible interpretations of the poem. The in-depth literary analysis seeks to enrich modern scholarly perceptions of the poem, suggest a more appropriate title, and contribute to continued scholarly discussion and analysis of the Exeter Book and its compilation. It provides a guide towards understanding the poem's main theme, presents the text in light of its position in ecclesiastical history, and sheds fresh light into its place and significance within the corpus of Old English poetry. M.R. Rambaran-Olm received her PhD from the University of Glasgow.Trade ReviewTo be praised for shedding new light on a needlessly maligned minor poem. * ENGLISH STUDIES *M. R. Rambaran-Olm provides a stimulating study of a single, shorter Old English poem (totaling 137 lines) from the Exeter Book that has been variously known as the Harrowing of Hell, Descent into Hell, and now John the Baptist's Prayer. . . . This translation captures the tour de force of the dramatic Old English, pulling key elements from the past of the poem forward into a modern rendering that rings with the author's imagery. * CHRISTIANITY & LITERATURE *This is an intelligent and interesting discussion and presentation of this poem. . . . [T]he appearance of a very useful edition of an interesting Old English poem should be celebrated. * CATHOLIC HISTORICAL REVIEW *John the Baptist's Prayer . . . gives insight into the workings of time in the poem, interpretation of individual passages, and the connections to the Easter Vigil. The book, and particularly the edition, should be consulted by anyone working on the poem. * THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW *Table of ContentsIntroduction Paleography, Codicology and Language The descensus motif Literary Analysis Selected Comparative Studies and Analogous Literature Afterword Apparatus: Text and Translation Commentary Appendix 1: The Doctrine of the descensus according to Post-Apostolic and Medieval Commentators from the First Century to the end of the Eleventh Century AD Appendix 2: Scriptural References Appendix 3: Other Sources and Analogues Appendix 4: Transcription and Images of folio 120r Glossary Bibliography
£76.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Malory and his European Contemporaries: Adapting
Book SynopsisA reconsideration of Arthurian compilations in the late middle ages, looking at the complex ways in which they reshape their material for new audiences. The late-medieval adaptions and compilations of the Arthurian story are a European phenomenon that has sparked both mystification and controversy. Often dismissed as nostalgic recreations that attempt to halt the literary tide, these ambitious projects saw adaptors from across Western Europe combining a vast array of prose and verse sources from different languages into encyclopedic narrative chronologies of King Arthur and his court. Ranging from ornate verse adaptations to heavily condensed prose works, the resulting texts reflect a process of translating, cutting and arranging Arthurian material into new literary incarnations, which nonetheless retain recognisable versions of the Arthurian story. This study re-evaluates Malory's Morte Darthur and four broadly contemporary European romance collections, including Jean Gonnot's French BN.fr.112 manuscript, Ulrich Fuetrer's German Buch der Abenteuer, the Dutch Lancelot Compilation, and the Italian Tavola Ritonda, in the context of this adaptive process. In doing so, it investigates how the adaptors respond to the shared structural and stylistic challenges of incorporating new material into the well-known story of King Arthur and comes to intriguing conclusions about the ways in which the narrative demands of late Arthurian adaptations invited authors to populate the Arthuriancourt with new and more complex protagonists. Miriam Edlich-Muth currently teaches Old and Middle English language and literature at the University of Cambridge.Trade ReviewA welcome addition to Arthurian studies. * FOLKLORE *Offers a valuable new perspective from which to understand Malory's work and also addresses texts not well known in English in their own right. . . . [W]ill be useful reading for all Arthurians, and especially for Malory scholars. * SPECULUM *[An] insightful book. * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *Edlich-Muth has written a concise survey and evaluation of five contemporaneous late-medieval Arthurian romance collections. Recommended. * CHOICE *Malory and his European Contemporaries is firmly founded on impressive scholarship, and it achieves its goals of characterizing a related group of late medieval Arthurian compilations. Developing a sense of a related group of works provides a valuable frame against which each book can be considered, and it invites scholars to be aware of the breadth of roughly contemporary Arthurian literature. * THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW *Table of ContentsIntroduction The Adaptation Process Style and Narrative Strategy Chronological and Genealogical Structures in the Morte Darthur, the Buch der Abenteuer and the Tavola Ritonda Narrative Plot Development in the Morte Darthur, the Buch der Abenteuer and the Tavola Ritonda 'The Best Knight in the World': Adapting Character Constellations Conclusion Appendix: Note on the Texts and Manuscripts Bibliography
£66.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Chaucer and Array: Patterns of Costume and Fabric
Book SynopsisAn analysis of the ways in which Chaucer uses details of costume, clothing and fabric, enhancing our understanding of and shedding fresh insights into his work. The use Chaucer made of costume rhetoric, and its function within his body of works, are examined here for the first time. The study explores Chaucer's knowledge of the conventional imagery of medieval literary genres, especiallymedieval romances and fabliaux, and his manipulation of rhetorical conventions through variations and omissions. In particular, it addresses Chaucer's habit of playing upon his audience's expectations, derived from their knowledge of the literary genres involved - and why he omits lengthy passages of costume rhetoric in his romances, but includes them in some of his comedic works, It also discusses the numerous minor facets of costume rhetoric employed in decorating his texts. Chaucer and Array responds to the questions posed by medievalists concerning Chaucer's characteristic pattern of apportioning descriptive detail in his characterization by costume. It alsoexamines his depiction of clothing and textiles representing contemporary material culture while focusing attention on the literary meaning of clothing and fabrics as well as on their historic, economic and religious signification. Laura F. Hodges blends her interests in medieval literature and the history of costume in her publications, specializing in the semiotics of costume and fabrics in literature. A teacher of English literature for a number of years, she holds a doctorate in literature from Rice University.Trade ReviewIn many ways this book reads like a culminating statement about what the field now knows about the garments that Chaucer's characters wear, and also how we got here. * SPECULUM *As many folklorists are medievalists in disguise, this book should have broad appeal to us, in spite of its apparently narrow focus. There is much to be learned about historic display and apparel, and understanding just how carefully Chaucer controlled his descriptions of dress, both to elucidate characters and to provide 'surprises for his audience by upsetting their expectations' (186). * JOURNAL OF FOLKLORE RESEARCH *By extending her study beyond the General Prologue, Hodges provides the sole catalogue of Chaucerian costume rhetoric across his corpus. * REVIEW OF ENGLISH STUDIES *
£76.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd English Vernacular Minuscule from Æthelred to
Book SynopsisFirst full-scale examination of the phenomenon of the English Vernacular minuscule, analysing the full corpus and giving an account of its history and development. A new, distinct script, English Vernacular minuscule, emerged in the 990s, used for writing in Old English. It appeared at a time of great political and social upheaval, with Danish incursions and conquest, continuing monastic reform, and an explosion of writing and copying in the vernacular, including the homilies of Ælfric and Wulfstan, two different recensions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, two of the four major surviving manuscripts of Old English poetry (the "Beowulf" and "Junius" books), and many original royal and ecclesiastical diplomas, writs and wills. However, although these important manuscripts and documents have been studied extensively, this has tended to be in isolation or small groups, never before as a complete corpus, a gap which this volume aims to rectify. It opens with the historical context, followed by a thorough reexamination of the evidence for dating and localising examples of thescript. It then offers a full analysis of the complete corpus of surviving writing in English Vernacular minuscule, datable approximately from its inception in the 990s to the death of Cnut in 1035. While solidly grounded in palaeographical methodology, the book introduces more innovative approaches: by examining all of the approximately 500 surviving examples of the script as a whole rather than focussing on selected highlights, it presents a synthesis ofthe handwriting in order to identify local practices, new scribal connections, and chronological and stylistic developments in this important but surprisingly little-studied script. Peter Stokes is Senior Lecturer at King's College London.Trade ReviewA major contribution to our knowledge of pre-1066 English cultural and ecclesiastical history. * LIBRARY *[A]n authoritative assessment of the most important scribal hand in late Anglo-Saxon England, as well as being a major statement of method. * YEAR'S WORK IN ENGLISH STUDIES *[A] superb study...rich in learning and never less than cogently argued.... In sum this is an exemplary study. * AMARC NEWSLETTER *Stokes's book is a highly technical introduction to the origins and developments of Anglo-Saxon scripts during this most productive half century, which will be most helpful to scholars and students using digital libraries for scholarly projects. * THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW *Table of ContentsIntroduction Background Attributions of Origin Scribal Change in Bookhands and Charters: The 'Tall and Narrow' Hands Scribal Continuity in Bookhands and Charters: The 'Square Influenced' Hands Glosses and Scribbles Conclusion: Change and Continuity in Early English Vernacular Minuscule Appendix: List of Scribal Hands Glossary
£80.75
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Machaut and the Medieval Apprenticeship
Book SynopsisA close examination of an important theme in Machaut's works. A milestone in Machaut studies and in late-medieval French literature in general. Machaut, already considered the seminal figure in late-medieval poetics and music, here comes across in these respects more clearly than ever. Kelly also further contextualises him within what we might call the authorial `apprenticeship tradition' of Boethius, the Roman de la Rose, Dante, and later Gower, Chaucer, and Christine de Pizan. The fruit of one of the field's most distinguished scholars today. Nadia Margolis, Mount Holyoke College. Guillaume de Machaut was celebrated in the later Middle Ages as a supreme poet and composer, and accordingly, his poetry was recommended as amodel for aspiring poets. In his Voir Dit, Toute Belle, a young, aspiring poet, convinces the Machaut figure to mentor her. This volume examines Toute Belle as she masters Machaut's dual arts of poetry and love, focusing onher successful apprenticeship in these arts; it also provides a thorough review of Machaut's art of love and art of poetry in his dits and lyricsm, and the previous scholarship on these topics. It goes on to treat Machaut's legacy among poets who, like Toute Belle, adapted his poetic craft in new and original ways. A concluding analysis of melodie identifies the synaesthetic pleasure that late medieval poets, including Machaut, offer their readers. Douglas Kelly is Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.Trade ReviewKelly's book is a considerable contribution to Machaut scholarship, and it offers a rich resource - and a challenge - for future generations seeking to experience the manuscripts as the master himself intended. * H-FRANCE *[A] wide-ranging and fascinating tripartite work. * MEDIAEVISTIK *This is a significant and insightful book of impressive scope, given the range of Machaut's corpus that it embraces through dexterously detailed intertextual reading. * SPECULUM *Essential reading for any Machaut scholar. [It] will be of incalculable value to future scholars seeking to navigate the works of this formidable medieval magister. * MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW *[A]n important new contribution to late medieval literary studies and a very worthy continuation of Douglas Kelly's long and influential bibliography on Guillaume de Machaut and his successors. Kelly, like the great poet to whom he has devoted much of his career, distinguishes himself as both a master of traditional forms and an exciting innovator. * MODERN PHILOLOGY *The author does a good job of surveying previous scholarship . . . and in analyzing Machaut's variegated poetry he touches on allegory, poetic art, assimilation, bestiary, commonplaces, debate, exemplary figures, gender, life and love, music, personification, reader and audience, subtlety, truth, and virtue. Summing up: Highly recommended. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsIntroduction Machaut's Evolving Conception of Good Love The Vicissitudes of Good Love: A Quandary? The Scope of Toute Belle's Art of Poetry Examples and Their Reconfiguration The Debate Mode Machaut as Pre-Text: Imitation and Emulation Melodie Bibliography of Primary Sources Bibliography of Secondary Studies
£90.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Index of Middle English Prose: Handlist XXI:
Book SynopsisLatest volume in a series which is "a monumental achievement" REVIEW OF ENGLISH STUDIES The Hatton and e Musaeo manuscript collections are important donations given to the Bodleian Library during its formative years in the seventeenth century. The Hatton collection, assembled by Christopher, first Baron Hatton,was largely acquired by the Bodleian Library in 1671. Among its Middle English prose manuscripts are religious texts, including Nicholas Love's Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, commentaries by Richard Rolle on the psalms and ten commandments, chronicles such as the Brut and an assortment of manuscripts ranging from political prophecies and grammar treatises to compendia of medical recipes. The e Musaeo collection, so called because it was originally an eclectic group of manuscripts stored in the librarian's study, also contains a variety of significant Middle English texts. They range from the religious and devotional: a Wycliffite New Testament, Love's Mirror, and Heinrich Suso's treatise The Seven Points of True Love and Everlasting Wisdom); to the scientific and medicinal: Chaucer's Astrolabe, Henry Daniel's Liber Uricrisiarum; and to the historical, notably the Brut and Mandeville's Travels. Patrick J. Horner, FSC (a De LaSalle Christian Brother) is Professor of English at Manhattan College.Trade ReviewHorner's volume keeps to the scrupulously high standard of the series, with a variety of useful indices, commentaries, and frequent cross-listing of texts with other IMEP handlists. * SPECULUM *
£66.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Makers and Users of Medieval Books: Essays in
Book SynopsisEssays exploring different aspects of late medieval and early modern manuscript and book culture. Late medieval manuscripts and early modern print history form the focus of this volume. It includes new work on the compilation of some important medieval manuscript miscellanies and major studies of merchant patronage and of a newly revealed woman patron, alongside explorations of medieval texts and the post-medieval reception history of Langland, Chaucer and Nicholas Love. It thus pays a fitting tribute to the career of Professor A.S.G. Edwards, highlighting his scholarly interests and demonstrating the influence of his achievements. Carol M. Meale is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bristol; the late Derek Pearsall was Professor Emeritus at Harvard University and Honorary Research Professor at the University of York. Contributors: Nicolas Barker, J.A. Burrow, A.I. Doyle, Martha W. Driver, Susanna Fein, Jane Griffiths, Lotte Hellinga, Alfred Hiatt, Simon Horobin, Richard Linenthal,Carol M. Meale, Orietta Da Rold, John Scattergood, Kathleen L. Scott, Toshiyuki Takamiya, John J. Thompson.Trade Review[O]ffers a compendium of much of the research going on in Middle English manuscript and bibliographical studies and will be invaluable to scholars at all levels. * JEGP *These essays bring new findings to the table and deserve to be widely read by students of medieval books. * ARCHIV *An excellent volume that everyone working in early book studies will want to read, and from which those who do not normally engage with manuscript and print studies would learn a great deal. * JOURNAL OF THE EDINBURGH BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY *[The essays] are generous, rigorous, richly detailed and replete with fascinating discoveries about medieval books. * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *It is precisely this sort of research that can offer clinching evidence for arguments about premodern books and the texts contained in them. It is vital that there remains a publishing space for this level of evidence. * THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW *Table of ContentsForeword Winning and Wasting in Wynnere and Wastoure and Piers Plowman - John A. Burrow The Reference Work in the Fifteenth Century: John Whethamstede's Granarium - Alfred Hiatt Pageants Reconsidered - Martha W. Driver Codicology, Localization and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc. 108 - Orietta Da Rold The Fillers of the Auchinleck Manuscript and the Literary Culture of the West Midlands - Susanna Fein Tanner 190 Revisited - Nicolas Barker Early Printed Continental Books owned in England: Some Examples in the Takamiya Collection - Toshiyuki Takamiya Early Printed Continental Books owned in England: Some Examples in the Takamiya Collection - Richard Linenthal The Two Issues of More's Book against Luther - A I Doyle Trinity College MS 516: A Clerical Historian's Personal Miscellany - John Scattergood Katherine de la Pole and East Anglian Manuscript Production in the Fifteenth Century: An Unrecognized Patron? - Carol Meale Past Ownership: Evidence of Book Ownership by English Merchants in the Later Middle Ages - Kathleen Scott From Poggio to Caxton: Early Translations of some of Poggio's Latin Facetiae - Lotte Hellinga Love in the 1530s - John J. Thompson Editorial Glossing and Reader Resistance in a Copy of Robert Crowley's Piers Plowman - Jane Griffiths Beaupré Bell and the Editing of Chaucer in the Eighteenth Century - Simon Horobin A. S. G. Edwards: List of Publications Index of Manuscripts General Index Tabula Gratulatoria
£76.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Studies in Medievalism XXIII: Ethics and
Book SynopsisEssays on the modern reception of the Middle Ages, built round the central theme of the ethics of medievalism. Ethics in post-medieval responses to the Middle Ages form the main focus of this volume. The six opening essays tackle such issues as the legitimacy of reinventing medieval customs and ideas, at what point the production and enjoyment of caricaturizing the Middle Ages become inappropriate, how medievalists treat disadvantaged communities, and the tension between political action and ethics in medievalism. The eight subsequent articles then build on this foundation as they concentrate on capitalist motives for melding superficially incompatible narratives in medievalist video games, Dan Brown's use of Dante's Inferno to promote a positivist, transhumanist agenda, disjuncturesfrom medieval literature to medievalist film in portrayals of human sacrifice, the influence of Beowulf on horror films and vice versa, portrayals of war in Beowulf films, socialism in William Morris's translation of Beowulf, bias in Charles Alfred Stothard's Monumental Effigies of Great Britain, and a medieval source for death in the Harry Potter novels. The volume as a whole invites and informs a much larger discussion on such vital issues as the ethical choices medievalists make, the implications of those choices for their makers, and the impact of those choices on the world around us. Karl Fugelso is Professor of Art History at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland. Contributors: Mary R. Bowman, Harry Brown, Louise D'Arcens, Alison Gulley, Nickolas Haydock, Lisa Hicks, Lesley E. Jacobs, Michael R. Kightley, Phillip Lindley, Pascal J. Massie, Lauryn S. Mayer, Brent Moberley, Kevin Moberley, Daniel-Raymond Nadon, Jason Pitruzello, Nancy M. Resh, Carol L. Robinson, Christopher Roman, M.J. Toswell.Table of ContentsEditorial Note The Dangers of the Search for Authenticity?: The Ethics of Hallowe'en - M J Toswell Living Memory and the Long Dead: The Ethics of Laughing at the Middle Ages - Louise D'Arcens Justice Human and Divine: Ethics in Margaret Frazer's Medievalist Dame Frevisse Series - Lisa Hicks Justice Human and Divine: Ethics in Margaret Frazer's Medievalist Dame Frevisse Series - Lesley E. Jacobs The Song Remains the Same: Crossing Intersections to Create an Ethical World via an Adaptation of Everyman for Everyone - Daniel-Raymond Nadon The Song Remains the Same: Crossing Intersections to Create an Ethical World via an Adaptation of Everyman for Everyone - Nancy M. Resh The Song Remains the Same: Crossing Intersections to Create an Ethical World via an Adaptation of Everyman for Everyone - Carol L. Robinson Bringing Elsewhere Home: A Song of Ice and Fire's Ethics of Disability - Pascal J. Massie and Lauryn S. Mayer The Ethical Movement of Daenerys Targaryen - Christopher Roman What if the Giants Returned to Albion for Vengeance?: Crusade and the Mythic Other in the Knights of the Nine Expansion to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Jason Pitruzzello The Dark Ages of the Mind: Eugenics, Amnesia, and Historiography in Dan Brown's Inferno - Brent Moberly The Dark Ages of the Mind: Eugenics, Amnesia, and Historiography in Dan Brown's Inferno - Kevin Moberly Plastic Pagans: Viking Human Sacrifice in Film and Television - Harry Brown Meat Puzzles: Beowulf and Horror Film - Nickolas Haydock Words, Swords, and Truth: Competing Visions of Heroism in Beowulf on Screen - Mary R. Bowman Socialism and Translation: The Folks of William Morris's Beowulf - Michael R. Kightley "We Wol Sleen this False Traytor Deeth": The Search for Immortality in Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale and J. K. Rowling's The Deathly Hallows - Alison Gulley Intention or Accident? Charles Alfred Stothard's Monumental Effigies of Great Britain - Philip G Lindley
£76.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd German Romance V: Erec
Book SynopsisNew edition, with facing English translation, of one of the most important Arthurian works from the middle ages. Erec is the earliest extant German Arthurian romance, freely adapted and translated into Middle High German by the Swabian knight, Hartmann von Aue, from the first Old French Arthurian romance, Chrétien de Troyes' Erec et Enide. Hartmann's work dates from c. 1180, but the only (almost) complete manuscript dates from the early sixteenth century, copied into the huge two-volume Ambraser Heldenbuch, now housed in Vienna - the most comprehensive extant compilation of medieval German romances and epics, commissioned by Emperor Maximilian I. Otherwise, only a few earlier medieval fragments survive. Erec tells the story of a young knight at King Arthur's court, whose early prowess wins him high repute, and a beautiful wife, Enite. He falls into disrepute because of his excessively zealous devotion of his time to her. Alerted to his notoriety, he embarks on a series of symbolic adventures, which eventually lead to his achieving a new balance between the claims of love and those of society. Far more than a simple translation, Hartmann's first attempt at an Arthurian romance is notable for its zest and gusto. This is the first edition with a parallel text translation into English; it is presented with explanatory notes and variant readings. Cyril Edwards is a Senior Research Fellow of Oxford University's Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, and an Honorary Research Fellow of University College London.Trade ReviewThe translation reads smoothly and can easily be recommended to someone new to Hartmann. * FABULA *[A] very impressive achievement. . . . Scholars, teachers, and students alike can make use of this wellbound tome, with its select bibliography and index of persons and places. Highly recommended. * CHOICE *[T]he edition is complete, the translation effective for analysis in English or comparison with the original text, and the notes illuminating at a basic level for those delving into editions of medieval texts. As the first parallel edition with an English translation, it is a welcome addition to the available resources for MHG texts in anglophone settings. * SPECULUM *Table of ContentsIntroduction The stranger knight and his dwarf Coralus and Enite The combat for the sparrow-hawk King Arthur's justice after the killing of the white stag and Iders' arrival in Cardigan Erec's last night in his father-in-law's house Enite's reception at King Arthur's court Erec and Enite marry The tournament between Tarebron and Prurin Erec's return home; his sloth Erec's fight with robbers; his harshness to Enite Lady Enite's ruse Guivreiz li Pitiz Erec's encounter with Kay Erec's encounter with Gawein; Morgan le Fay Erec fights with two giants Erec's collapse and Enite's despair Count Oringles in Limors; Erec and Enite reconciled Erec encounters Guivreiz; his sojourn in Penefrec Enite's palfrey Castle Brandigan Joie de la curt and the Red Knight Mabonagrin's tale The eighty widows; return to Arthur's court Erec's homecoming Select Bibliography
£95.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Sexual Culture in the Literature of Medieval
Book SynopsisAn examination into aspects of the sexual as depicted in a variety of medieval texts, from Chaucer and Malory to romance and alchemical treatises. It is often said that the past is a foreign country where they do things differently, and perhaps no type of "doing" is more fascinating than sexual desires and behaviours. Our modern view of medieval sexuality is characterised bya polarising dichotomy between the swooning love-struck knights and ladies of romance on one hand, and the darkly imagined and misogyny of an unenlightened "medieval" sexuality on the other. British medieval sexual culture also exhibits such dualities through the influential paradigms of sinner or saint, virgin or whore, and protector or defiler of women. However, such sexual identities are rarely coherent or stable, and it is in the grey areas, the interstices between normative modes of sexuality, that we find the most compelling instances of erotic frisson and sexual expression. This collection of essays brings together a wide-ranging discussion of the sexual possibilitiesand fantasies of medieval Britain as they manifest themselves in the literature of the period. Taking as their matter texts and authors as diverse as Chaucer, Gower, Dunbar, Malory, alchemical treatises, and romances, the contributions reveal a surprising variety of attitudes, strategies and sexual subject positions. Amanda Hopkins teaches in English and French at the University of Warwick; Robert Allen Rouse is Associate Professor of English atthe University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; Cory James Rushton is Associate Professor of English at St Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, Canada. Contributors: Aisling Byrne, Anna Caughey, Kristina Hildebrand, Amy S. Kaufman, Yvette Kisor, Megan G. Leitch, Cynthea Masson, Hannah Priest, Samantha J. Rayner, Robert Allen Rouse, Cory James Rushton, Amy N. VinesTrade ReviewThis collection successfully demonstrates the complexity of medieval sexual culture and would be useful for any with an interest in gender, sexuality, and Middle English romance. * CERAE *Highly recommended. * CHOICE *Sexual Culture in the Literature of Medieval Britain, with its nuanced and carefully researched and contextualized literary analyses, offers a crucial counterbalance to what is still at times the prevailing, Foucauldian, view of the Middle Ages. * SPECULUM *Table of ContentsIntroduction: A Light Thrown upon Darkness: Writing about Medieval British Sexuality - Robert Rouse Introduction: A Light Thrown upon Darkness: Writing about Medieval British Sexuality - Cory Rushton Open Manslaughter and Bold Bawdry: Male Sexuality as a Cause of Disruption in Malory's Morte Darthur - Kristina Hildebrand Erotic (Subject) Positions in Chaucer's Merchant's Tale - Amy S. Kaufman Enter the Bedroom: Managing Space for the Erotic in Middle English Romance - Megan G. Leitch 'Naked as a nedyll': The Eroticism of Malory's Elaine - Yvette Kisor 'How love and I togedre met': Gower, Amans and the Lessons of Venus in the Confessio Amantis - Samantha J. Rayner 'Bogeysliche as a boye': Performing Sexuality in William of Palerne - Hannah Priest Fairy Lovers: Sexuality, Order and Narrative in Medieval Romance - Aisling Byrne Text as Stone: Desire, Sex and the Figurative Hermaphrodite in the Ordinal and Compound of Alchemy - Cynthea Masson Animality, Sexuality and the Abject in Three of Dunbar's Satirical Poems - Anna Caughey The Awful Passion of Pandarus - Cory Rushton Invisible Woman: Rape as a Chivalric Necessity in Medieval Romance - Amy N. Vines
£58.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd War and Literature
Book SynopsisConsiderations of writing about war, in war, because of war, and against war, in a wide range of texts from the middle ages onwards. War was the first subject of literature; at times, war has been its only subject. In this volume, the contributors reflect on the uneasy yet symbiotic relations of war and writing, from medieval to modern literature. War writing emerges in multiple forms, celebratory and critical, awed and disgusted; the rhetoric of inexpressibility fights its own battle with the urgent necessity of representation, record and recognition. This is shown to be true even to the present day: whether mimetic or metaphorical, literature that concerns itself overtly or covertly with the real pressures of war continues to speak to issues of pressing significance, and to provide some clues to the intricateentwinement of war with contemporary life. Particular topics addressed include writings of and about the Crusades and battles during the Hundred Years War; Shakespeare's "Casus Belly"; Auden's "Journal of an Airman"; and War and Peace. Ian Patterson is a poet, critic and translator. He teaches English at Queens' College, Cambridge. Laura Ashe is Associate Professor of English and a Tutorial Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford. Contributors: Joanna Bellis, Catherine A.M. Clarke, Mary A. Favret, Rachel Galvin, James Purdon, Mark Rawlinson, Susanna A. Throop, Katie L. Walter, Carol Watts, Tom F. Wright, Andrew Zurcher.Trade Review[P]resents a wide-ranging collection of essays with a strong awareness of the complex moral responsibilities of war writing. * YEAR'S WORK IN ENGLISH STUDIES *Present[s] a broad-ranging and eclectic examination of our cultural responses to conflict. * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *Table of ContentsPreface Acts of Vengeance, Acts of Love: Crusading Violence in the Twelfth Century - Susanna A. Throop Peril, Flight and the Sad Man: Medieval Theories of the Body in Battle - Katie Louise Walter 'Is This War?': British Fictions of Emergency in the Hot Cold War - James Purdon Crossing the Rubicon: History, Authority and Civil War in Twelfth-Century England - Catherine A M Clarke 'The Reader myghte lamente': the sieges of Calais (1346) and Rouen (1418) in chronicle, poem and play - Joanna Bellis Shakespeare's Casus Belly... - Andrew Zurcher Unnavigable Kinship in a Time of Conflict: Loyalist Calligraphies, Sovereign Power and the 'Muckle Honor' of Elizabeth Murray Inman - Carol Watts Proclaiming the War News: Richard Caton Woodville and Herman Melville - Tom F. Wright A Feeling for Numbers: Representing the Scale of the War Dead - Mary A. Favret The Guilt of the Noncombatant and W. H. Auden's 'Journal of an Airman' - Rachel Galvin Does Tolstoy's War and Peace make modern war literature redundant? - Mark Rawlinson
£49.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Classical Literature and Learning in Medieval
Book SynopsisExaminations of the use of classical Latin texts, themes and techniques in medieval Irish narrative. This edited volume will make a major contribution to our appreciation of the importance of classical literature and learning in medieval Ireland, and particularly to our understanding of its role in shaping the content, structureand transmission of medieval Irish narrative. Dr Kevin Murray, Department of Early and Medieval Irish, University College Cork. From the tenth century onwards, Irish scholars adapted Latin epics and legendary histories into the Irish language, including the Imtheachta Aeniasa, the earliest known adaptation of Virgil's Aeneid into any European vernacular; Togail Troí, a grand epic reworking of the decidedly prosaic historyof the fall of Troy attributed to Dares Phrygius; and, at the other extreme, the remarkable Merugud Uilixis meic Leirtis, a fable-like retelling of Ulysses's homecoming boiled down to a few hundred lines of lapidary prose.Both the Latin originals and their Irish adaptations had a profound impact on the ways in which Irish authors wrote narratives about their own legendary past, notably the great saga Táin Bó Cúailnge (The Cattle-Raid of Cooley). The essays in this book explore the ways in which these Latin texts and techniques were used. They are unified by a conviction that classical learning and literature were central to the culture of medieval Irish storytelling,but precisely how this relationship played out is a matter of ongoing debate. As a result, they engage in dialogue with each other, using methods drawn from a wide range of disciplines (philology, classical studies, comparative literature, translation studies, and folkloristics). Ralph O'Connor is Professor in the Literature and Culture of Britain, Ireland and Iceland at the University of Aberdeen. Contributors: Abigail Burnyeat, Michael Clarke, Robert Crampton, Helen Fulton, Barbara Hillers, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Ralph O'Connor, Erich Poppe.Trade ReviewAdds greatly to current discussions about Latin source-material for vernacular Irish texts.... The studies are informative and interesting, and also provide an excellent introduction to those new to the field. * CAMBRIAN MEDIEVAL CELTIC STUDIES *[A]nyone interested in epic, or the textualization of oral traditions, should read this straight through. It is especially relevant to reception studies and translation theory. Instead of simply giving the Classicizing camp its day, the volume helps us imagine how a blended, bilingual scribal culture of scholar-authors, consciously preserving their age-old culture while discovering the Classical world, created some of the world's most compelling literature. * BRYN MAWR CLASSICAL REVIEW *Table of ContentsIrish narrative literature and the Classical tradition, 900-1300 - Ralph O'Connor Imtheachta Aeniasa and its place in medieval Irish textual history - Erich Poppe History and historia: uses of the Troy story in medieval Ireland and Wales - Helen Fulton The uses of exaggeration in Merugud Uilixis Meic Leirtis and in Fingal Chlainne Tanntail - Robert Crampton The medieval Irish Wandering of Ulysses between literacy and orality - Barbara Hillers Demonology, allegory and translation: the Furies and the Morrígan - Michael Clarke Reconstructing the medieval Irish bookshelf: a case study of Fingal Rónáin and the horse-eared kings - Michael Clarke 'The metaphorical Hector': the literary portrayal of Murchad mac Bríain - Maire Ni Mhaonaigh Was Classical imitation necessary for the writing of large-scale Irish sagas? Reflections on Táin Bó Cúailnge and the 'watchman device' - Ralph O'Connor 'Wrenching the club from the hand of Hercules': Classical models for medieval Irish compilatio - Abigail Burnyeat Bibliography
£71.25
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Arthurian Literature XXXI
Book SynopsisArthurian Literature has established its position as the home for a great diversity of new research into Arthurian matters. It delivers fascinating material across genres, periods, and theoretical issues. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT The studies collected in this volume demonstrate the enduring vitality of the Arthurian legend in a wide range of places, times and media. Chrétien's Conte du Graal features first in a study of the poem's place in its Anglo-Norman context, followed by four essays on Malory's Morte Darthur. Two of these deal with the significance of wounds and wounding in Malory's text, while the third explores the problematic aspects of sleep and the "slepynge knight" in that same romance. The fourth considers "transformative female corpses" as, quite literally, the embodiment of critical comment on the chivalric community in the Morte Darthur. There follow two studies of the Arthurian legend captured in material objects: the first concerns the early twelfth-century images on a marble column from the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela, the second a twentieth-century tapestry created by Lady Trevelyan for the family home at Wallington Hall. The volume closes with an essay that brings us into the twenty-first century, with an assessment of Kaamelott, an irreverent French Pythonesque television series. ElizabethArchibald is Professor of English Studies at Durham University, and Principal of St Cuthbert's Society; David F. Johnson is Professor of English at Florida State University, Tallahassee. Contributors: Karen Cherewatuk,Tara Foster, Joan Tasker Grimbert, Erin Kissick, Irit Ruth Kleiman, Megan Leitch, Roger Simpson, K.S. Whetter.Trade ReviewA discipline like Arthurian Studies benefits greatly from a publication venue for longer articles, especially one with the status and pleasant format of the series Arthurian Literature. This thirty-first volume has the quality and variety that one would expect. * SPECULUM *Table of ContentsChrétien's Conte Du Graal between Myth and History - Irit Ruth Kleiman Malory's Thighs and Launcelot's Buttock: Ignoble Wounds and Moral Transgression in the Morte Darthur - Karen Cherewatuk Weeping, Wounds, and Worshyp in Malory's Morte Darthur - Kevin S Whetter Sleeping Knights and 'Such Maner of Sorow-Makynge': Affect, Ethics and Unconsciousness in Malory's Morte Darthur - Megan G. Leitch Mirroring Masculinities: Transformative Female Corpses in Malory's Morte Darthur - Erin Kissick Tristan and Iseult at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela - Joan Tasker Grimbert Trevelyan Triptych: A Family and the Arthurian Legend - Roger Simpson Kaamelott: A new French Arthurian Tradition - Tara Foster
£66.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Dating of Beowulf: A Reassessment
Book SynopsisExaminations of the date of Beowulf have tremendous significance for Anglo-Saxon culture in general. This book will be a milestone, and deserves to be widely read. The early Beowulf that overwhelmingly emerges here asks hard questions, and the same strictly defined measures of metre, spelling, onomastics, semantics, genealogy, and historicity all cry out to be tested further and applied more broadly to the whole corpus of Old English verse. Andy Orchard, Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, University of Oxford. The datingof Beowulf has been a central question in Anglo-Saxon studies for the past two centuries, since it affects not only the interpretation of Beowulf, but also the trajectory of early English literary history. By exploring evidence for the poem's date of composition, the essays in this volume contribute to a wide range of pertinent fields, including historical linguistics, Old English metrics, onomastics, and textual criticism. Many aspects of Anglo-Saxon literary culture are likewise examined, as contributors gauge the chronological significance of the monsters, heroes, history, and theology brought together in Beowulf. Discussions of methodology and the history of the discipline also figure prominently in this collection. Overall, the dating of Beowulf here provides a productive framework for evaluating evidence and drawing informed conclusions about its chronological significance. These conclusions enhance our appreciation of Beowulf and improve our understanding of the poem's place in literary history. Leonard Neidorf is a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. Contributors: Frederick M. Biggs, Thomas A. Bredehoft, George Clark, Dennis Cronan, Michael D.C. Drout, Allen J. Frantzen, R.D. Fulk, Megan E. Hartman, Joseph Harris, Thomas D. Hill, Leonard Neidorf, Rafael J. Pascual, Tom ShippeyTrade Review2015 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title * . *Serious and impressive. * MEDIAEVISTIK *This is a magnum opus, which liberates the text for all the 'others' - the cultural historians, the archaeologists, the art-historians etc. It suddenly becomes unquestionable to quarry this wonderful mine once more, when trying to understand the world, the poet lived in. * MEDIEVAL HISTORIES *[The] contributors.present their ideas clearly and concretely [and] the volume should help scholars arrive at an informed opinion about the poem's date. * ANGLIA *The Dating of Beowulf: A Reassessment is bound to become one of the most influential books in Anglo-Saxon studies. The first-rate essays in this volume will steer the course of Beowulf scholarship in many productive directions, supplying the field with a secure foundation for future literaryhistorical research. * MODERN PHILOLOGY *The contributors' various methodologies are more technical and more objective than those of pre-1981 early-dating arguments, and collectively offer a cohesive and compelling case for Beowulf's early composition. Not only is this volume a necessary companion for the 1981 collection, it stands on its own as an introduction to key issues in the dating of Old English poetry. Essential. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsIntroduction Beowulf and Language History - R D Fulk Germanic Legend, Scribal Errors, and Cultural Change - Leonard Neidorf Names in Beowulf and Anglo-Saxon England - Tom Shippey The Limits of Conservative Composition in Old English Poetry - Megan E. Hartman The Date of Composition of Beowulf and the Evidence of Metrical Evolution - Thomas A. Bredehoft Beowulf and the Containment of Scyld in the West Saxon Royal Genealogy - Dennis Cronan History and Fiction in the Frisian Raid - Frederick M. Biggs 'Give the People What They Want': Historiography and Rhetorical History of the Dating of Beowulf Controversy - Michael D. C Drout 'Give the People What They Want': Historiography and Rhetorical History of the Dating of Beowulf Controversy - Emily Bowman 'Give the People What They Want': Historiography and Rhetorical History of the Dating of Beowulf Controversy - Phoebe Boyd A Note on the Other Heorot - Joseph Harris Beowulf and Conversion History - Thomas D Hill Material Monsters and Semantic Shifts - Rafael J. Pascual Scandals in Toronto: Kaluza's Law and Transliteration Errors - George Clark Afterword: Beowulf and Everything Else - Allen J. Frantzen
£75.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Medieval Romance and Material Culture
Book SynopsisStudies of how the physical manifests itself in medieval romance - and medieval romances as objects themselves. Medieval romance narratives glitter with the material objects that were valued and exchanged in late-medieval society: lovers' rings and warriors' swords, holy relics and desirable or corrupted bodies. Romance, however, is also agenre in which such objects make meaning on numerous levels, and not always in predictable ways. These new essays examine from diverse perspectives how romances respond to material culture, but also show how romance as a genre helps to constitute and transmit that culture. Focusing on romances circulating in Britain and Ireland between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, individual chapters address such questions as the relationship between objects and protagonists in romance narrative; the materiality of male and female bodies; the interaction between visual and verbal representations of romance; poetic form and manuscript textuality; and how a nineteenth-century edition of medieval romances provoked artists to homage and satire. NICHOLAS PERKINS is Associate Professor and Tutor in English at St Hugh's College, University of Oxford. Contributors: Siobhain Bly Calkin, Nancy Mason Bradbury, Aisling Byrne, Anna Caughey, Neil Cartlidge, Mark Cruse, Morgan Dickson, Rosalind Field, Elliot Kendall, Megan G. Leitch, Henrike Manuwald, Nicholas Perkins, Ad Putter, Raluca L. Radulescu, Robert Allen Rouse,Trade ReviewVigorously engages with current work on materialisms. * REVIEW OF ENGLISH STUDIES *From cover to cover, this book is hard to put down. The prose, the content, and ultimately the context give much pause to consider new angles in medieval material culture scholarship. * COMITATUS *The variety and richness of medieval culture are amply served by the range of studies. * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Materiality of Medieval Romance and The Erle of Tolous - Nicholas Perkins Courtly Culture and Emotional Intelligence in The Romance of Horn - Rosalind Field Emplaced Reading, or Towards a Spatial Hermeneutic for Medieval Romance - Robert Rouse Devotional Objects, Saracen Spaces and Miracles in Two Matter of France Romances - Siobhain Bly Calkin The Werewolf of Wicklow: Shapeshifting and Colonial Identity in the Lai de Melion - Neil Cartlidge 'Ladyes war at thare avowing': The Female Gaze in Late-Medieval Scottish Romance - Anna Caughey The Evolution of Cooperation in The Avowyng of Arthur - Elliot Kendall Ritual, Revenge and the Politics of Chess in Medieval Romance - Adventures in the Bob-and-Wheel Tradition: Narratives and Manuscripts - Ad Putter Reading King Robert of Sicily's Text(s) and Manuscript Context(s) - Raluca Radulescu The Circulation of Romances from England in Late-Medieval Ireland - Aisling Byrne The Image of the Knightly Harper: Symbolism and Resonance - Morgan Dickson Carving the Folie Tristan: Ivory Caskets as Material Evidence of Textual History - Henrike Manuwald Romancing the Orient: The Roman d'Alexandre and Marco Polo's Livre du grand Khan in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodl. 264 - Mark Cruse The Victorian Afterlife of the Thornton Romances - Nancy Mason Bradbury
£85.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Telling the Story in the Middle Ages: Essays in
Book SynopsisNew examinations of the role storytelling played in medieval life. The storyteller stands at the crossroads of orality and performance, surrounded by a circle of rapt listeners. Evelyn Birge Vitz has challenged a generation of scholars to join the circle, listen as they read, and exchange pen forperformance. A tribute to her work, the fifteen essays in this volume attend to the qualities of voice, their registers and dynamics, whether practiced or impromptu, falsified, overlapping, interrupted or whispered. They examinehow the book became a performance venue and reshaped the storyteller's image and authority, and they investigate the mutability of stories that move from book to book, place to place and among competing cultures to stimulate cultural and political change. They show storytelling as far more than entertainment, but central to law, religious ritual and teaching, as well as the primary mode of delivering news. Themes that crisscross the volume include tensionsamong amateurs and professionals, dominant and minority languages and cultures, women and children's engagement with storytelling, animality, religion, translation, travel, didacticism and entertainment. Kathryn A. Duys is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of English and Foreign Languages at the University of St. Francis in Joliet, Illinois; Elizabeth Emery is Professor of French and Graduate Coordinator at Montclair State University; Laurie Postlewate is Senior Lecturer in French at Barnard College of Columbia University. Contributors: Elizabeth Archibald, Maureen Boulton, Cristian Bratu, Simonetta Cochis, Joyce Coleman, Mark Cruse, Kathryn A.Duys, Elizabeth Emery, Marilyn Lawrence, Kathleen Loysen, Laurie Postlewate, Nancy Freeman Regalado, Samuel N. Rosenberg, E. Gordon Whatley, Linda Marie Zaerr.Table of ContentsIntroduction 'Of Aunters They Began to Tell': Informal Story in Medieval England and Modern America - Linda Marie Zaerr The Storyteller's Verbal Jonglerie in 'Renart jongleur' - Marilyn Lawrence Plusurs en ai oïz conter: Performance and the Dramatic Poetics of Voice in the Lais of Marie de France - Simonetta Cochis Who Tells the Stories of Poetry? Villon and his Readers - Nancy Freeman Regalado The Audience in the Story: Novices Respond to History in Gautier de Coinci's Chasteé as nonains - Kathryn A. Duys Effet de parlé and Effet d'écrit: The Authorial Strategies of Medieval French Historians - Cristian Bratu Or, Entendez!: Jacques Tahureau and the Staging of the Storytelling Scene - Kathleen A. Loysen Telling the Story of the Christ Child: Text and Image in Two Fourteenth-Century Manuscripts - Maureen Boulton Authorizing the Story: Guillaume de Machaut as Doctor of Love - Joyce Coleman Retelling the Story: Intertextuality, Sacred and Profane, in the Late Roman Legend of St Eugenia - E. Gordon Whatley Ruodlieb and Romance in Latin: Audience and Authorship - Elizabeth Archibald Turner a pru: Conversion and Translation in the Vie de seint Clement - Laurie Postlewate Stories for the King: Narration and Authority in the 'Crusade Compilation' of Philippe VI of France (London, British Library, Royal 19.D.i) - Mark Cruse Le Berceau de la littérature française: Medieval Literature as Storytelling in Nineteenth-Century France - Elizabeth Emery Retelling the Old Story - Samuel N. Rosenberg
£76.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Medievalism: a Critical History
Book SynopsisAn accessibly-written survey of the origins and growth of the discipline of medievalism studies. The field known as "medievalism studies" concerns the life of the Middle Ages after the Middle Ages. Originating some thirty years ago, it examines reinventions and reworkings of the medieval from the Reformation to postmodernity,from Bale and Leland to HBO's Game of Thrones. But what exactly is it? An offshoot of medieval studies? A version of reception studies? Or a new form of cultural studies? Can such a diverse field claim coherence? Should it be housed in departments of English, or History, or should it always be interdisciplinary? In responding to such questions, the author traces the history of medievalism from its earliest appearances in the sixteenth century to the present day, across a range of examples drawn from the spheres of literature, art, architecture, music and more. He identifies two major modes, the grotesque and the romantic, and focuses on key phases of the development of medievalism in Europe: the Reformation, the late eighteenth century, and above all the period between 1815 and 1850, which, he argues, represents the zenith of medievalist cultural production. He also contends that the 1840s were medievalism's one moment of canonicity in several European cultures at once. After that, medievalism became a minority form, rarely marked with cultural prestige, though always pervasive and influential. Medievalism: a Critical History scrutinises several key categories - space, time, and selfhood - and traces the impact of medievalism on each. It will be the essential guide to a complex and still evolving field of inquiry. David Matthews is Professor of Medieval and Medievalism Studies at the University of Manchester.Trade ReviewA major new work on medievalism, it deserves to be studied by students or scholars interested in this latest period of a medieval revival. * PARERGON *This book is a highly informative, accessible, and occasionally humorous guide for anyone interested in learning about medievalism on a macro-scale. * TOEBI *Matthews' account of the history and contemporary status of medievalism is both highly readable (he is an elegant stylist) and frequently provocative. . . . [He] offers a fresh overview and compelling meta-commentary on the history and practice of medievalism, focusing on its uneasy relationship with medieval studies. * THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW *In his well-researched book, Medievalism: A Critical History, David Matthews provides a foundational study for the multidisciplinary field of medievalism studies. * MEDIEVALLY SPEAKING *Tracing the history of medievalism from the 16th century to today, the author closely examines significant phases in the development of medievalism studies, paying special attention to the period between 1815 and 1850, which he cogently argues was the apogee of medievalism in European popular culture, and provides the foundation for the relationship between medievalism and medieval studies. Recommended. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsIntroduction How Many Middle Ages? "Welcome to the Current Middle Ages": Asynchronous Medievalism This Way to the Middle Ages: The Spaces of Medievalism On Being Medieval: Medievalist Selves and Societies Wemmick's Castle: The Limits of Medievalism Realism in the Crypt: The Reach of Medievalism Conclusion: Against a Synthesis: Medievalism, Cultural Studies, and Antidisciplinarity Afterword Appendix I: The Survey of Reenactors Appendix II: Key Moments in Medievalism Bibliography
£58.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Torture and Brutality in Medieval Literature:
Book SynopsisA new look at the way in which medieval European literature depicts torture and brutality. An ugly subject, but one that needs to be treated thoroughly and comprehensively, with a discreet wit and no excessive relish. These needs are richly satisfied in Larissa Tracy's bold and important book. DEREK PEARSALL, ProfessorEmeritus, Harvard University. Torture - that most notorious aspect of medieval culture and society - has evolved into a dominant mythology, suggesting that the Middle Ages was a period during which sadistic torment wasinflicted on citizens with impunity and without provocation: popular museums displaying such gruesome implements as the rack, the strappado, the gridiron, the wheel, and the Iron Maiden can be found in many modern European cities.These lurid images of medieval torture have re-emerged within recent discussions on American foreign policy and the introduction of torture legislation as a weapon in the "War on Terror", and raised questions about its history and reality, particularly given its proliferation in some literary genres and its relative absence in others. This book challenges preconceived ideas about the prevalence of torture and judicial brutality in medieval society byarguing that their portrayal in literature is not mimetic. Instead, it argues that the depictions of torture and brutality represent satire, critique and dissent; they have didactic and political functions in opposing the statusquo. Torture and brutality are intertextual literary motifs that negotiate cultural anxieties of national identity; by situating these practices outside their own boundaries in the realm of the barbarian "Other", medieval and early-modern authors define themselves and their nations in opposition to them. Works examined range from Chaucer to the Scandinavian sagas to Shakespeare, enabling a true comparative approach to be taken. Larissa Tracy isAssociate Professor, Longwood University.Trade ReviewTracy's insights regarding writers' (often specious) rejections of torture as belonging to an alienated past, a pagan oppressor or a foreign enemy, serve as a timely rejoinder to the ways in which we do exactly the same, in labelling as 'medieval' the brutality that characterizes societies and governments now just as it did then. * REVIEW OF ENGLISH STUDIES *[T]he ambitious scope of this project is impressive and laudable. [...] a truly impressive [book] in the range of its historical and geographic coverage. * THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW *The value of this book rests not only in its redefinition of medieval attitudes to torture, but also in its consideration of modern attitudes to torture. [.] Its wealth of detail and breadth of coverage ensure that it has the potential to become one of the seminal studies in the field. * ÓENACH: FMRSI REVIEWS *Tracey convincingly points to a persistent 'literary resistance' to unjust uses of pain for power. [...] Highly recommended. * CHOICE *Larissa Tracey's book constitutes an illuminating challenge to popular conceptions of the Middle Ages. [...] her study suggests that [...] modern times have more in common with the Middle Ages than most of us might like to believe. * TLS *Tracy's in-depth study historicizes torture, demonstrating that, as a rare topos of medieval literature, it predominantly articulated a distrust and rejection of violent judicial practices. Whatever its impact on modern-day detractors of medieval civilization may be, this argument should become part of medievalists' further reflection on the place and meaning of cruelty in the Middle Ages. * SPECULUM *Table of ContentsIntroduction Rending the Flesh: The Orthodoxy of Torture in Hagiography Resisting the Rod: Torture and the Anxieties of Continental Identity The Matter of the North: Icelandic Sagas and Cultural Autonomy The Matter of Britain: Defining English Identity in Opposition to Torture Laughing at Pain: The Comic Uses of Torture and Brutality Medieval Torture and Early-Modern Identity - Jay Paul Gates Conclusion Select Bibliography
£25.64
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Translating Beowulf: Modern Versions in English
Book SynopsisAn examination of English verse translations of Beowulf, including Seamus Heaney's version alongside other influential renditions. A senior scholar writing here at the height of his powers and bringing experience and insight to an important topic... the second chapter is one of the best short, general introductions to the artistry of the poem I have read...A dizzying and engaging narrative. Dr Chris Jones, Senior Lecturer in English Poetry, Department of English, University of St Andrews Translations of the Old English poem Beowulf proliferate, and their number continues to grow. Focusing on the particularly rich period since 1950, this book presents a critical account of translations in English verse, setting them in the contexts both of the larger story of the recovery and reception of the poem and of perceptions of it over the past two hundred years, and of key issues in translation theory. Attention is also paid to prose translation and to the creative adaptations of the poem that have been produced in a variety of media, not least film. The author looks in particular at four translations of arguably the most literary and historical importance: those by Edwin Morgan [1952], Burton Raffel [1963], Michael Alexander [1973] and SeamusHeaney [1999]. But, from an earlier period, he also gives a full account of William Morris's strange 1898 version. Hugh Magennis is Emeritus Professor of Old English Literature at Queen's University Belfast.Trade Review[A] percipient, absorbing, and eloquent study. * SPECULUM *[T]his engaging study will be of great interest to scholars, students, and general readers alike. * NOTES AND QUERIES *This is both a very enjoyable and a very scholarly book. [...] As a sustained exercise in close reading it is exemplary. * ÓENACH *Interesting and compelling, this book is essential reading for Beowulf scholars and those with an interest in poetry and translation. * ENGLISH *While much of this history is known to Anglo-Saxonists, Magennis offers to a broader readership a wide-ranging and lively synthesis of Beowulf scholarship, informed by his own clear enthusiasm for the subject and his authoritative grasp of Old English and Latin. * TRANSLATION AND LITERATURE *An important study which will interest students of translation and reception theory and initiates and acolytes of Old English literary culture. Highly recommended. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsPreface Beowulf and Translation Approaching the Poetry of Beowulf Reception, Perceptions, and a Survey of Earlier Verse Translations of Beowulf Edwin Morgan: Speaking to his Own Age Burton Raffel: Mastering the Original to Leave It Michael Alexander: Shadowing the Old English Seamus Heaney: A Living Speech Raised to the Power of Verse Other Post-1950 Verse Translations Epilogue Bibliography
£23.74
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Arthurian Literature XXXII
Book SynopsisArthurian Literature has established its position as the home for a great diversity of new research into Arthurian matters. It delivers fascinating material across genres, periods, and theoretical issues. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT The essays collected here put considerable emphasis on Arthurian narratives in material culture and historical context, as well as on purely literary analysis, a reminder of the enormous range of interests in Arthurian narrativesin the Middle Ages, in a number of different contexts. The volume opens with a study of torture in texts from Chrétien to Malory, and on English law and attitudes in particular. Several contributors discuss the undeservedly neglected Stanzaic Morte Arthur, a key source for Malory. His Morte Darthur is the focus of several essays, respectively on the sources of the "Tale of Sir Gareth"; battle scenes and the importance of chivalric kingship; Cicero's De amicitia and the mixed blessings and dangers of fellowship; and comparison of concluding formulae in the Winchester Manuscript and Caxton's edition. Seven tantalizing fragments of needlework, all depictingTristan, are discussed in terms of the heraldic devices they include. The volume ends with an update on newly discovered manuscripts of Geoffrey of Monmouth's seminal Historia regum Britanniae, the twelfth-century best-seller which launched Arthur's literary career. Elizabeth Archibald is Professor of English Studies at Durham University, and Principal of St Cuthbert's Society; David F. Johnson is Professor of English at Florida State University, Tallahassee. Contibutors: David Eugene Clark, Marco Nievergelt, Ralph Norris, Sarah Randles, Lisa Robeson, Richard Sévère, Jaakko Tahkokallio, Larissa TracyTable of ContentsWounded Bodies: Kingship, National Identity, and Illegitimate Torture in the English Arthurian Tradition - Larissa Tracy The Place of Emotion: Space, Silence and Interiority in the Stanzaic Morte Arthur - Marco Nievergelt Another Source for Malory's 'Tale of Sir Gareth' - Ralph Norris 'Warre and Worshyppe': Depictions of Battle in Malory's Le Morte Darthur - Lisa Robeson Malory's 'Chivalric Cliques': Public and Private Felyshyp in the Arthurian Community - Richard Sévère Scribal Modifications to Concluding Formulae in the Winchester Manuscript - David Eugene Clark Heraldic Imagery in the Embroidered Tristan Narratives - Sarah Randles Update to the List of Manuscripts of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae - Jaakko Tahkokallio
£71.25
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Italian Literature III: Il Tristano Corsiniano
Book SynopsisText and facing English translation of a version of the Tristan story from north-east Italy. The Tristano Corsiniano is preserved in a unique manuscript of the Biblioteca Corsiniana housed at the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome (MS 55.K.5; formerly Rossi 2593). Written in a mixture of northeastern Italian dialects, the manuscript was probably copied in the third quarter of the fourteenth century. The contents are a much abbreviated descendent of the noted French prose Roman de Tristan; opening with Dinadan's amusing discoursesand misadventures, the majority of the story concerns the famous three-day Tournament at Loverzep, and concludes with King Arthur and Lancelot visiting Tristan, Yseut and their companions. The manuscript, although not luxurious,is heavily decorated with designs that perfectly reflect the vigorous and spirited narrative style. This volume presents a new edition of the text, accompanied by the first ever translation into English, thereby making this important version of the Tristan story available more widely. It also includes an introduction, listing of illuminations, bibliography and explanatory notes. Gloria Allaire is Assistant Professor of Italian at theUniversity of Kentucky.Trade ReviewIn the translation of the manuscript, Allaire finds a felicitous balance between being faithful to the original Italian text with its own repetitions and inconsistencies while also making the English narrative readable and enjoyable. * ARTHURIANA *Table of ContentsIntroduction Text and Translation Appendix: Typology of Illuminations Bibliography Index of Proper Names
£81.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Complete Story of the Grail: Chrétien de
Book SynopsisThe 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]
£132.29
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Medicine, Religion and Gender in Medieval Culture
Book SynopsisAn exploration of the relations between medical and religious discourse and practice in medieval culture, focussing on how they are affected by gender. Current preoccupations with the body have led to a growing interest in the intersections between religion, literature and the history of medicine, and, more specifically, how they converge within a given culture. This collection of essays explores the ways in which aspects of medieval culture were predicated upon an interaction between medical and religious discourses, particularly those inflected by contemporary gendered ideologies. The essays interrogatethis convergence broadly in a number of different ways: textually, conceptually, historically, socially and culturally. They argue for an inextricable relationship between the physical and spiritual in accounts of health, illness and disability, and demonstrate how medical, religious and gender discourses were integrated in medieval culture. Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa is Professor of English in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Shizuoka University. Contributors: Louise M. Bishop, Elma Brenner, Joy Hawkins, Roberta Magnani, Takami Matsuda, Liz Herbert McAvoy, Irina Metzler, Denis Renevey, Patricia Skinner, Juliette Vuille, Diane Watt, Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa.Trade ReviewAnyone intrigued by the peculiar body-centered, corporeal spirituality of medieval female mystics, and interested in the history of popular Christian devotion before 1500 . . . will find in this rich collection food for thought and a plethora of enlightening examples. * CATHOLIC HISTORICAL REVIEW *A valuable contribution to the scholarship. * FRANCIA *Table of ContentsIntroduction - Naoe Kutika Yoshikawa Mary the Physician: Women, Religion and Medicine in the Middle Ages - Diane Watt Chaucer's Physicians: Raising Questions of Authority - Roberta Magnani Heavenly Vision and Psychosomatic Healing: Medical Discourse in Mechtild of Hackeborn's the Booke of Gostlye Grace - Naoe Kutika Yoshikawa Bathing in Blood: The Medicinal Cures of Anchoritic Devotion - Liz Herbert McAvoy "Maybe I'm Crazy?" Diagnosis and Contextualisation of Medieval Female Mystics - Juliette Vuille Purgatory and Spiritual Healing in John Audelay's Poems - Takami Matsuda Reginald Pecock's Reading Heart and the Health of Body and Soul - Louise M Bishop Disabled Children: Birth Defects, Causality and Guilt - Irina Metzler Marking the Face, Curing the Soul? Reading the Disfigurement of Women in the Later Middle Ages - Patricia Skinner Did Drunkenness Dim the Sight? Medieval Understandings and Responses to Blindness in Medical and Religious Discourse - Joy Hawkins Between Palliative Care and Curing the Soul: Medical and Religious Responses to Leprosy in France and England, c.1100-c.1500 - Elma Brenner Afterword - Denis Renevey Select Bibliography
£80.75
