Search results for ""medieval institute publications""
Medieval Institute Publications Global Perspectives on Medieval English Literature, Language, and Culture
The twelve essays in this volume proceed from a modern fantasy-epic back in time to oral epics that have been transmitted through the technology of manuscripts, and central in the collection are two articles that address Chaucer's Middle English courtly epic, Troilus and Criseyde. Each, in its own way, presents a global perspective on its subject, whether by comparing texts, by considering textual transmission through translation, or by contrasting medieval issues with developing global movements. . . . These articles are presented as evidence of the international cooperation that has been fostered by the work of Paul Szarmach in the international community of medievalists and of the success of his vision in opening up the borders of a discipline that too long has been Eurocentric and not global in its perspective. - from the Introduction
£30.00
Medieval Institute Publications The Hands of the Tongue: Essays on Deviant Speech
What destructive powers did the tongue and its speech have for medievals? It could damn humans through blasphemy. It could occlude penitential knowledge of the self, especially of the misdirected will, by generating excuses for what the medieval clergy regarded as sin. It could disrupt monastic disciplines of meditation or distract parishioners during sermons. It could turn good repute to ill, destroying a woman's chances for marriage, a man's masculine self, a merchant's credit, or a defendant's status in a court of law. However, speech could maintain or restore credit, status, and masculinity, and it could also preserve honor in knights or women, in their particular roles as faithful feudal wives. Many of the essays in The Hands of the Tongue: Essays on Deviant Speech bridge disciplines, with social historians adducing evidence from lyrics, narrative poetry, and plays, or literary historians working from moral theology and biblical exegesis. Certainly the whole set of essays works to remind medievalists that any aspects of medieval culture worth studying must be explored collectively. Together the contributors present a clear picture of what we know about deviant speech in medieval culture, offering a critical perspective on the state of the scholarship.
£17.50
Medieval Institute Publications The N-Town Plays
In the late 1400s in eastern England, a scribe was in the process of compiling a large dramatic manuscript of over two hundred vellum folios. The manuscript contains components of an independent Mary Play, parts one and two of an independent Passion Play and an independent Assumption of Mary Play, as well as ten play subjects that appear in no other English cycles - the killing of Lamech in the Noah Play, the Root of Jesse, the story of Joachim and Anne, the Presentation of Mary in the Temple, the Parliament of Heaven, the Trial of Mary and Joseph, the scene of Mary and the cherry tree in the Nativity Play, the Death of Herod, the scene of Veronica's handkerchief in the Procession to Calvary, and the appearance of the risen Christ to the Virgin Mary in her Assumption Play. This edition acknowledges the N-Town compiler who took plays from various contexts and integrated them into an existing cycle of plays, thus treating the manuscript as if it were a superstructure whose parts could be replaced, renovated, and supplemented without altering the fundamental coherence of the overarching design.
£35.00
Medieval Institute Publications The Glossa Ordinaria on Romans
The Gloss on Romans is a collection of sources from many periods and places, which accounts for its inconsistencies. And this is what gives the Gloss much of its charm ... The twelfth century was an age of gathering sources and commentaries, in theology (Lombard's Sentences), canon law (Gratian's Decretum), and biblical studies (the Glossa ordinaria). Education began to flourish into what would become universities, where the master's role was to elucidate traditional, authoritative texts. And chief among these was the Bible, not standing alone but with the accompanying Gloss." - from the introduction
£22.00
Medieval Institute Publications On John Gower: Essays at the Millennium
It would not be an exaggeration to observe that in the last two decades Gower studies have developed in response to a widening appreciation of his poetry. On John Gower: Essays at the Millennium represents the third volume of essays originating from sessions of the John Gower Society at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan. The contributions here and in the previous volumes provide insight into the shifts and trends in Gower studies over time. This collection offers a vibrant and fresh view of the field of Gower studies today, making it and its companion volumes an essential set for Gower scholars.
£17.50
Medieval Institute Publications The Minor Latin Works: with In Praise of Peace
Gower's achievement in writing substantially in all three primary languages of his time-Anglo-French, English, and Latin-was a source of pride to others and, undoubtedly, to him too: into the final years of his life he continued to produce poetry in all three languages. Certainly there is reason to know these poems for the light they shed on the intense partisanship and events of great moment surrounding the usurpation 1399-1400. It was during these parlous times that Gower composed most of the poems included here. All are important documents historically; but they are also poems admirable equally for their skill and craft. In Praise of Peace is in the same position as the shorter Latin works edited and translated in this volume: ignored, neglected, reduced, or relegated to the dusty realm of footnotes. But there is far more at work in this complex poem, as Gower's verse deftly weaves in and out of the historical, political, social, and religious contexts and controversies of its day. In tone, In Praise of Peace is, if not triumphant, determinedly optimistic. In this light, we might view the poem as a coda to Gower's long career, restating and reinvigorating his famously moral principles about just rule of self and society.
£12.42
Medieval Institute Publications Saints' Lives in Middle English Collections
This volume is conceived as a complement to another Middle English Texts series text, Sherry Reames' Middle English Legends of Women Saints. This selection is intended to be broadly representative of saints' lives in Middle English and of the classic types of hagiographic legend as these were presented to the lay public and less-literate clergy of late medieval England.
£35.00
Medieval Institute Publications The Glossa Ordinaria on the Song of Songs
In this translation of glosses on the Song of Songs, Mary Dove offers a readily accessible and inexpensive resource for students and scholars. Anselm of Laon, possibly assisted by his brother Ralph, is credited with compiling the Glossa Ordinaria on the Song of Songs, drawing from earlier commentaries by Origen, Gregory the Great, Bede, Alcuin, Hrabanus Maurus, Haimo of Auxerre, and Robert of Tombelaine as well as contributing his own readings of the text. As Dove notes in her introduction, the text is quite complicated, with each manuscript page divided into three columns - the biblical text in large letters in the center column, with space left for interlinear glosses, and glosses in smaller letters in both the right- and left-hand columns. (This format is not reproduced in this translation.) The number of surviving manuscripts (over seventy) shows that plenty of readers enjoyed the challenges the text offered, and for modern readers, the Glossa Ordinaria is the first place to go to find medieval interpretation of biblical texts.
£17.50
Medieval Institute Publications Stanzaic Guy of Warwick
The poem, which survives only in the Auchinleck Manuscript, deals with the later years of Guy's life, beginning with his return to Warwick after having established himself on the Continent as a pre-eminent model of knighthood. After his marriage, however, he is stricken by remorse for the very actions that have brought him fame, and he sets out anonymously on a series of pilgrimages of atonement.
£13.21
Medieval Institute Publications Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger
This volume makes available two somewhat neglected yet significant and instructive Middle English alliterative texts that are usually read in conjunction with William Langland's Piers Plowman. The texts, both anonymous, are Richard the Redeless, which concerns the government style of Richard II (1367-1400; reigned 1377-99), and Mum and the Sothsegger, which addresses social issues in the reign of Henry IV (1367-1413; reigned 1399-1413). They should be assigned reading not only for those interested in the later reception of Piers Plowman but also for those seeking to understand literary and historical forces in late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century England. Richard the Redeless (focusing on events in and around 1399) offers an often regretful, sometimes sharp critique of Richard's kingship under the guise of advice; Mum and the Sothsegger provides a satirical look at bureaucratic institutions during Henry's regime. Both works reveal that alliterative poetry in the Piers Plowman tradition continued to be the chief vehicle for political and social criticism at the turn of the fourteenth century.
£17.50
Medieval Institute Publications Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales
Although nearly everyone has heard the name of Robin Hood, few have actually read any medieval tales about the legendary outlaw. Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren set out to correct this discrepancy in their comprehensive collection of all pre-seventeenth-century Robin Hood tales. The editors include such other "outlaw" figures as Hereward the Wake, Eustache the Monk, and Fouke le Fitz Waryn to further contextualize the tradition of English outlaw tales. In this text the figure of Robin Hood can be viewed in historical perspective, from the early accounts in the chronicles through the ballads, plays, and romances that grew around his fame and impressed him on our fictional and historical imaginations. This edition is particularly useful for classrooms, with its extensive introductions, notes, and glosses, enabling students of any level to approach the texts in their original Middle English.
£32.50
Medieval Institute Publications Studies in the Harley Manuscript: The Scribes, Contents, and Social Contexts of British Library MS Harley 2253
Studies in the Harley Manuscript is the first comprehensive examination of a manuscript that is of supreme value to literary scholars of medieval English literature. In an Introduction and fifteen essays a team of scholars considers many aspects of the 140 folios of this trilingual miscellany that preserves 121 items (or 122 depending on how one counts) from which we get a strange and privileged glimpse into the rich literary heritage that existed in England prior to the flourishing of vernacular poetry in the Richardian era. As the Contents indicates, the history and composition of the manuscript are considered, as are the Anglo-Norman, English, and Latin compositions that it preserves. This is a companion volume to the three volume complete edition of Harley 2253.
£35.00
Medieval Institute Publications The Worlde and the Chylde
The Worlde and the Chylde, issued by the press of Wynkyn de Worde in 1521, is one of the very earliest plays published in England. It also has very considerable interest for its adaptation of the Ages of Man iconography, which is extensively treated in the introduction, notes, and illustrations.
£43.00
Medieval Institute Publications Improvisation in the Arts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance
One impression that stands out from this collection is the extent to which improvisation was an important factor in all of the arts. As each of the authors assembles a case by ferreting out bits and pieces of information having to do with a single art, the weight of the assembled material lends additional strength to each case. By considering the overall picture that results, as well as that made by each of the individual studies, the reader is able to see much more clearly the role played by improvisation from the late Middle Ages through to the time of Shakespeare and beyond. A careful reading of the essays brings with it the awareness that to ignore improvisation is to distort the art in a major way. In light of the present volume, the very concept of faithful historical re-creation takes on a much broader and more complex character.
£13.61
Medieval Institute Publications Pearl
Pearl resists identification by author, date, occasion, or place of composition; still it is almost unanimously hailed as one of the masterpieces of our literature, so skilled is its author, so eloquent its language. It is a story, according to Sarah Stanbury, "of crossing-over, the stepping out from the ordinary life into a parallel universe where things operate by different natural laws: down the rabbit hole, through the wardrobe or looking glass, across the ocean to be shipwrecked on Prospero's island, or more recently, across a bridge to the island of Willow Springs in Gloria Naylor's haunting novel, Mama Day, where the crossing-over moves into a place of memory and hope, the nostalgic space of home as well as Beulah or Eden, the earthly paradise."
£13.61
Medieval Institute Publications The Early Art of Norfolk: A Subject List of Extant and Lost Art Including Items Relevant to Early Drama
Fifteen years in the making, Ann Eljenholm Nichols's The Early Art of Norfolk: A Subject List of Extant and Lost Art Including Items Relevant to Early Drama is the most comprehensive listing of early art from Norfolk ever compiled. It is based on careful examination of the painted glass, wall paintings, woodcarvings, and other art in the 600 or so churches of this county and also on thorough searching of archival records and antiquarian accounts. The book (double columns, 357 pages, plus plates) will serve as a standard reference source for students of the ecclesiastical arts and also will provide an essential dimension for drama scholars. Appendices treating angels, Norwich Cathedral bosses, apostles and prophets, liturgical estates, painted panels, christocentric sequences, and Te Deum as well, and there are glossaries (including terms used in describing costume) and a contribution by Barbara Green on the antiquaries whose notes provided essential information about lost examples of Norfolk art.
£19.25
Medieval Institute Publications Gesture in Medieval Drama and Art
Gesture and movement on stage in early drama have previously received very little attention in scholarship. The present collection of essays is the first book to present sensible, penetrating, and wide-ranging discussions of the gestural effects that were integral to the early stage. In addition to consideration of the influence of classical rhetoric and reference to medieval texts and documents, the essays carefully bring to bear evidence from the art of the period and hence will be of great importance for those interested in the visual arts as well as the theater; eschewing both the naive methodologies promoted in past criticism and ephemeral theoretical concerns, the book is truly ground-breaking. These essays will need to be perused by every serious theater historian or student of art concerned with the late Middle Ages.
£17.50
Medieval Institute Publications Studies on the Personal Name in Later Medieval England and Wales
This volume contains collected papers on medieval England's "names and naming patterns - mostly forenames or Christian names, but with some attention to family names." According to Rosenthal, there are "three lines of assault upon the culture and practice by way of analysis of names and naming" - "micro-social or family dynamic, village life, and limited name stock that confronts us when we tally the range of names that served the bulk of the population."—from the Introduction
£17.50
Medieval Institute Publications The Assembly of Gods: Le Assemble de Dyeus, or Banquet of Gods and Goddesses, with the Discourse of Reason and Sensuality
The Assembly of Gods, which was published near the end of the fifteenth century, is an allegorical dream vision poem. It is notable for its strange mixture of both classical and Christian sources, in which the classical pantheon debates over the moral state of an individual, in an attempt to bring Reson and Sensualyte into balance in the individual. This text is suitable for all levels of students with its introduction explaining the cultural and linguistic context of the text, as well as a gloss and notes. This volume is invaluable to those teaching courses on late medieval allegory and dream poems.
£17.50
Medieval Institute Publications Second Thessalonians: Two Early Medieval Apocalyptic Commentaries
Apocalyptic speculation, in one form or another, is as persistent at the turn of this millennium as it was at the last. The commentaries of Haimo of Auxerre and Thietland of Einsiedeln offer glimpses of two links in [the] unbroken chain of the apocalyptic tradition.
£13.61
Medieval Institute Publications Amoryus and Cleopes
In this volume, John Metham's classic romance Amoryus and Cleopes is made available to a wider audience of students and teachers of Middle English with its contextualizing introduction, extensive notes, and helpful gloss. This fifteenth century romance, written by John Metham, creatively reworks Ovid's tale of Pyramus and Thisbe's tragic love from his Metamorphoses. Metham draws on a wide variety of popular romances and particularly Chaucer's Ovidian works to create an inventive romance of his own with a decidedly moral aim. This volume will be of interest to students of Middle English romance and all those interested in the literary legacy of Chaucer.
£13.61
Medieval Institute Publications Prose Merlin
With its contextualizing introduction, notes, and gloss, this edition makes the Prose Merlin available to any student of Arthurian legend, no matter their level of proficiency in Middle English. Written in the latter half of the fifteenth century, the Prose Merlin is the first work of Arthurian literature written in English prose. The highly original poem, though based upon the French Vulgate cycle tradition of Arthurian legends, is full of episodes, motifs, and characters found nowhere else in the entire Arthurian corpus. Beginning with the story surrounding Merlin’s birth, and charting the course of his fantastical life until his ambiguous death, Prose Merlin is an enchanting text for any class studying Arthuriana.
£35.00
Medieval Institute Publications Studia Occitanica: In Memoriam Paul Remy, Volume 2 The Narrative-Philology
The second of two volumes dedicated to the memory of Paul Remy and having as theme the scientific domain to which he had dedicated his research for nearly forty years: the Occitan literature and language.
£41.00
Medieval Institute Publications De Ore Domini: Preacher and Word in the Middle Ages
De Ore Domini: Preacher and Word in the Middle Ages is a volume of thirteen essays, constituting a series of chapters in the history of preaching. The essays present a diversity of historical periods, audiences, and methodologies. Ranging in time from the 700s to 1511, they cover a space that stretches from Johannes Herolt’s Germany to Ramon Llull's Mallorca, from Bede's England to the Italy of Bernadino of Siena and Egidio da Viterbo. As the title suggests, the mouth of the Lord spoke with many voices, and the contributors to this volume provide important examinations of individual preachers, genres, and sources of sermons. Commentary and analyses are made of materials from the symbolic and allegorical to the practical and dogmatic, and even the educational. Further, the essays discuss how sermons were used at different periods and how they addressed different audiences. The studies illustrate new methods and concerns in the field of sermon studies, and, collectively, they point to a central problem in the historiography of sermons and preaching. The collection offers insights into modern approaches to studying medieval sermons and will be of interest to scholars of medieval religion, preaching, and culture.
£17.50
Medieval Institute Publications The Old English Hexateuch: Aspects and Approaches
Cotton Claudius B.iv, an illustrated Old English Hexateuch that is among the treasures of the British Library, contains one of the first extended projects of translation of the Bible in a European vernacular. Its over four hundred images make it one of the most extensively illustrated books to survive from the early Middle Ages and preserve evidence of the creativity of the Anglo-Saxon artist and his knowledge of other important early medieval picture cycles. In addition, the manuscript contains the earliest copy of Aelfric's Preface to Genesis, a work that discusses issues of translation and interpretation.
£26.50
Medieval Institute Publications Commentary on the Song of Songs: And Other Kabbalistic Commentaries
The commentary of Rabbi Ezra ben Solomon of Gerona (d. ca. 1245) on the Song of Songs is one of the most important texts of the first clearly identified circle of Kabbalists, those operating in the Catalonian town of Gerona at the middle of the thirteenth century.
£21.82
