Search results for ""Boydell Brewer Ltd""

Essays on the post-modern reception and interpretation of the Middle Ages, To attract followers many professional politicians, as well as other political actors, ground their biases in (supposedly) medieval beliefs, align themselves with medieval heroes, or condemn their enemies as medieval barbarians. The essays in the first part of this volume directly examine some of the many forms such medievalism can take, including the invocation of "blood libels" in American politics; Vladimir Putin's self-comparisons to "Saint Equal-of-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir"; alt-right references to medieval Christian battles with Moslems; nativist Brexit allusions to the Middle Ages; and, in the 2019 film The Kid Who Would be King, director Joe Cornish's call for Arthurian leadership through Brexit. These essays thus inform, even as they are tested by, the subsequent papers, which touch on politics in the course of discussing the director Guy Ritchie's erasure of Wales in the 2017 film King Arthur: Legend of the Sword; medievalist alt-right attempts to turn one disenfranchised group against another; Jean-Paul Laurens's 1880 condemnation of Napoleon III via a portrait of Honorius; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's extraordinarily wide range of medievalisms; the archaeology of Julian of Norwich's anchorite cell; the influence of Julian on pity in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter book series; the origins of introductory maps for medievalist narratives; self-reflexive medievalism in a television episode of Doctor Who; and sonic medievalism in fantasy video games.

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Essays considering the relationship between Gower's texts and the physical ways in which they were first manifested. The media in which Gower's works were first transmitted, whether in print of manuscript form, are of vital importance to an understanding of both the poet and his audience. However, in comparison with those of his contemporary Chaucer, they have been relatively little studied. This volume represents a major collaboration between specialist scholars in manuscript and book history, and experts in Gower more generally, breaking new ground in approaching Gower through first-hand study of his publications in manuscript and print. Its chapters consider such matters as manuscript and book illumination, provenance, variant texts and editions, scribes, and printers, looking at how, and to what degree, the materiality of the vellum, paper, ink and binding illuminates - and even implicates - the poet and his poetry. MARTHA DRIVER is Distinguished Professor of English and Women's and Gender Studies at Pace University; the late DEREK PEARSALL was Gurney Professor of English Literature, Emeritus, Harvard University; R.F. YEAGER Is Professor of English and Foreign Languages, Emeritus, University of West Florida. Contributors: Stephanie L. Batkie, Julia Boffey, Margaret Connolly, Siân Echard, A.S.G. Edwards, Robert Epstein, Brian W. Gastle, Amanda J. Gerber, Yoshiko Kobayashi, Aditi Nafde, Tamara Peréz-Fernández, Wendy Scase, Karla Taylor, David Watt.

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First collection devoted to the Poly-Olbion, bringing out in particular its concerns with nature and the environment. Poly-Olbion (1612-1622), the collaborative work of the poet Michael Drayton, the legal scholar John Selden, and the engraver William Hole, ranks among the most remarkable literary productions of early modern England, and arguably among the most important. An ambitious and idiosyncratic survey of the history, topography, and ecology of England and Wales - ranging in its preoccupations from the supernatural conception of Merlin to the curious habits of beavers, and from celebrations of martial glory to laments over the diminishment of woodlands - the book seems determined to pack all of national and natural history between its covers. In the course of thirty songs, Drayton's Muse traverses a varying landscape in which personified rivers, hills, and forests sing of past glories and disasters, pursuing local and regional rivalries whilst propounding a heterogeneous vision of Britain. However, perhaps because of its very uniqueness, it has received relatively little critical attention. This is the first ever volume of essays on Poly-Olbion, and a reflection of the work's increasing prominence in scholarship on the literature and culture of early modern England: the poem has long been central to critical studies of early modern nationhood and nationalism, but in the last decade it has also assumed a central place in discussions of pre-modern approaches to ecological sustainability and environmental degradation. The contributors here address questions about the form and purpose of Poly-Olbion, as well as engaging with these dominant critical debates, reflecting the extent to which the preoccupations of Drayton and his collaborators have become our own.

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First modern edition and translation of the homilies of one of the most important religious figures of his time. Ælfric of Eynsham stands supreme as a distinguished homilist, translator, and moralist - one whose writings were sought by the most powerful churchmen and landed warlords of his day. In his sermons, the dead are raised to life, innocents are betrayed, civilizations come to ruin, prophecies are finally fulfilled, and sorrow is swallowed up in salvation. He offers guidance regarding sex, financial counsel, botanical excursuses, etymological asides, lions cowed by roosters, arch-heretics disemboweled, and seemingly inconsequential figures receiving everlasting crowns. He also considers the origin of Antichrist, recounts supernatural visions of damnation and deliverance, teases out the tension between predestination and free will, explores the multifarious nature of the soul, seeks to categorize creation, and presses the boundaries of conceptual capacity in describing the divine nature. Treatises take up such subjects as the Holy Spirit, cognition, penitence, and proper comportment. Private prayers appear alongside public declarations of the Christian faith found in the Paternoster and the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds. The thirty-one texts presented here, with facing translations, span the course of his career: Old English and Latin, ordinary and alliterative prose, pithy prayers and exhaustive exegesis. Nine appear in print for the first time; others for the first time in well over 100 years. Introductions to the texts offer overviews of the content, composition, and circulation of each work, using the fruits of the latest research to envision real-world contexts for their use in specific places, among particular groups, and by certain individuals. Meanwhile, the commentary traces Ælfric's role in the history of ideas, examining his relationship to over 100 sources, 200 other Ælfrician works, and over 1,000 biblical passages; it seeks to clarify Ælfric's compositional aims and further to establish the authorship and date of these remarkable writings from early England.

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Examination of the motif of the prodigal son as treated in early modern drama, from Shakespeare to Beaumont and Fletcher. Why is it bad to spend too much money? In early modern England, the concept of prodigality governed all forms of financial excess and misuse, from gambling away your family estate to buying too much food. To be prodigal was not only to lack self-discipline but to be immorally excessive. Prodigals were foolish, reckless, and sinful, but their lives were also ones of excitement, lust, luxury, and intrigue. Ambivalently positioned between conservative financial ideals and increasingly popular economic indulgences, prodigals embodied a nation's anxieties about the advent of early capitalism. This book analyses the prodigal youth archetype in early modern drama, examining plays byShakespeare, Middleton, Jonson, Randolph, Chapman, Marston, Beaumont and Fletcher, Davenport, Gascoigne, Heywood, as well as anonymous works and morality plays. The theatres, which were so often criticised for financial excess, became the perfect setting for the rebellious exploits of prodigal youths, and their rises and falls were dramatised with increasing glamorisation between 1500 and 1642. By discussing humanist education practices, Aristotelian ethics, urban change, cuckoldry, usury, and sex work, the author offers the first examination of prodigality and the ways in which England at first condemned, then tolerated, and then eventually came to celebrate excessive spending. EZRA HORBURY is Lecturer in Renaissance/Early Modern Literature at the University of York.

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A powerful claim for the virtues of a more thoughtful and collegiate approach to the academy today. This book offers a response to the culture of metrics, mass digitisation, and accountability (as opposed to responsibility, or citizenship) that has developed in higher education world wide, as exemplified by the UK's Research Excellence Framework exercise (REF), and the increasing bureaucracy that limits the time available for teaching, research, and even conversation and collaboration. Ironically, these are problems that will be solved only by academicsfinding the time to talk and to work together. The essays collected here both critique the culture of speed in the neoliberal university and provide examples of what can be achieved by slowing down, by reclaiming research and research priorities, and by working collaboratively across the disciplines to improve conditions. They are informed both by recent research in medieval studies and by the problematic culture of twenty-first century higher education. The contributions offer very personal approaches to the academic culture of the present moment. Some tackle issues of academic freedom head-on; others more obliquely; but they all have been written as declarations of theacademic freedom that comes with slow thinking, slow reading, slow writing and slow looking and the demonstrations of its benefits. CATHERINE E. KARKOV is Professor and Chair of Art History at the University of Leeds. Contributors: Lara Eggleton, Karen Jolly, Chris Jones, James Paz, Andrew Prescott, Heather Pulliam

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A comprehensive survey of one of the most important texts of the Middle Ages. Malory's Morte Darthur is now a canonical and widely-taught text. Recent decades have seen a transformation and expansion of critical approaches in scholarship, as well as significant advances in understanding its milieux:textual, literary, cultural and historical. This volume adds to and updates the influential Companion of 1996, offering scholars, teachers and students alike a full guide to the text and the author. The essays it contains provide a synthetic overview of, and fresh perspectives on, the key questions about and contexts connected with the Morte. MEGAN G. LEITCH is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Cardiff University; CORY JAMES RUSHTON is Associate Professor in the Department of English at St Francis Xavier University, Canada. Contributors: Dorsey Armstrong, Thomas Crofts, Siân Echard, Rob Gossedge, Daniel Helbert, Amy Kaufman, Megan Leitch, Andrew Lynch, Catherine Nall, Ralph Norris, Raluca Radulescu, Lisa Robeson, Meg Roland, Cory Rushton, Masako Takagi, Kevin Whetter.

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A study of how the use of Ovid in Middle English texts affected Shakespeare's treatment of the poet. The debt owed by Shakespeare to Ovid is a major and important topic in scholarship. This book offers a fresh approach to the subject, in aiming to account for the Middle English literary lenses through which Shakespeare and his contemporaries often approached Greco-Roman mythology. Drawing its principal examples from The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, Lucrece, and Twelfth Night, it reinvestigates a selection of moments in Shakespeare's works that have been widely identified in previous criticism as "Ovidian", scrutinising their literary alchemy with an eye to uncovering how ostensibly classical references may be haunted by the under-acknowledged, spectral presences of medieval intertexts and traditions. Its central concern is the mutual hauntings of Ovid, Geoffrey Chaucer, and John Gower in the early modern literary imagination; it demonstrates that "Ovidian" allusions to mythological figures such as Ariadne, Philomela, or Narcissus in Shakespeare's dramatic and poetic works were sometimes simultaneously mediated by the hermeneutic and affective legacies of earlier vernacular texts,including The Legend of Good Women, Troilus and Criseyde, and the Confessio Amantis. LINDSAY ANN REID is a Lecturer in English at the National University of Ireland, Galway.

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The genre of medieval romance examined through the lens of their physical and their metrical forms. Romances were immensely popular with medieval readers, as evidenced by their ubiquity in manuscripts and early print. The essays collected here deal with the textual transmission of medieval romances in England and Scotland, combining this with investigations into their metre and form; this comparison of the romances in both their material form and their verse form sheds new light on their cultural and social contexts. Topics addressed include the textualhistory of Sir Orfeo; the singing of Middle English romances; their rhythms and rhyme schemes; their printed transmission from Caxton to Wynkyn de Worde; and the representation of the Otherworld in manuscript miscellanies. AD PUTTER is Professor of Medieval English at the University of Bristol; JUDITH A. JEFFERSON is Research Associate at the University of Bristol. Contributors: Michelle de Groot, Judith A. Jefferson, RebeccaE. Lyons, Carol M. Meale, Donka Minkova, Nicholas Mylkebust, Derek Pearsall, Rhiannon Purdie, Ad Putter, Elizabeth Robertson, Jordi Sánchez-Martí, Thorlac Turville-Petre

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First entire collection centred on Chaucer's Book of the Duchess, making a compelling case for its importance and value. The Book of the Duchess, Chaucer's first major poem, is foundational for our understanding of Chaucer's literary achievements in relation to late-medieval English textual production; yet in comparison with other works, itstreatment has been somewhat peripheral in previous criticism. This volume, the first full-length collection devoted to the Book, argues powerfully against the prevalent view that it is an underdeveloped or uneven early work, and instead positions it as a nuanced literary and intellectual effort in its own right, one that deserves fuller integration with twenty-first-century Chaucer studies. The essays within it pursue lingering questions as well as new frontiers in research, including the poem's literary relationships in the sphere of French and English writing, material processes of transmission and compilation, and patterns of reception. Each chapter advances an original reading of the Book of the Duchess that uncovers new aspects of its internal dynamics or of its literary or intellectual contexts. As a whole, the volume reveals the poem's mobility and elasticity within an increasingly international sphere of cultural discourse that thrives on dynamic exchange and encourages sophisticated reflection on authorial practice. Jamie C. Fumo is Professor of English at Florida State University. Contributors: B.S.W. Barootes, Julia Boffey, Ardis Butterfield, Rebecca Davis, A.S.G. Edwards, Jeff Espie, Philip Knox, Helen Phillips, Elizaveta Strakhov, Sara Sturm-Maddox, Marion Wells.

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An investigation into the depiction and reception of the figure of Alexander in the literatures of medieval Europe. How was Alexander the Great - controversial king, conqueror, explorer, and pupil of Aristotle, the subject of histories, romances, epic poetry, satires, and sermons in most of the languages of Europe and the Middle East - read, written and rewritten during the High Middle Ages? Aiming to illuminate not only the conqueror's history but also the fast-changing and complex literary landscape that existed between 1150 and 1350, this study considers Alexander narratives in Latin, varieties of French and English - the Alexandreis, the Roman d'Alexandre, the Roman de toute chevalerie, and Kyng Alisaunder - to address this vast and wide-ranging question. These important Alexander works are compared with the fortunes of other prestigious inherited tales, such as stories of Arthur and Troy, highlighting the various forms of translatio studii then prevalent across northern France andBritain. The book's historically appropriate focus on Latin, French and English allows it to take a multilingual and comparative approach to linguistic, literary and political cultures, moving away from interpretations driven by post-medieval nationalism to set the expansive phenomenon that is Alexander in its historical and transnational context. VENETIA BRIDGES is Assistant Professor in the Department of English Studies at Durham University.

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A series which is "a monumental achievement" (Review of English Studies). In 1755 Richard Rawlinson bequeathed his vast collection of books and manuscripts to the Bodleian Library. The manuscripts alone numbered over 5,000, and the 167 of these which contain Middle English prose are indexed in this Handlist. These are divided fairly evenly between religious and secular texts: Rawlinson does not seem to have been interested in any particular genre; if a book was old and deemed to be of historical interest it entered his collection, either as an acquisition or a contemporary transcription. Scriptural and devotional writing is represented by copies of the New Testament, three different works by Rolle and three by Hilton, Love's Mirror, a Primer, Sacerdos Parochialis, The Chastising of God's Children, The Mirror of Our Lady, The Mirror to Lewd Men and Women, excerpts from the works of St Catherine of Siena and St Bridget of Sweden, Mirk's Festial, other sermons,Wycliffite treatises, the only English copy known of William Thorpe's Testimony, prayers, several copies of Pore Caitiff, and more. Secular and political writing includes versions of Mandeville's Travels, John Fortescue's On the Governance of England, translations of two works by Alain Chartier, and The English Conquest of Ireland. There is a rich selection of historical prose, with ten Bruts in whole or part, royal genealogies, accounts of royal weddings and of the coronation of Richard II, descriptions of court etiquette, the deposition of Richard II, the challenge for the English throne of Henry IV and his speech of acceptance. Scientific and utilitarian prose is illustrated by Chaucer's Astrolabe, grammatical treatises, alchemical writings by Lull and Ripley, medical treatises, especially urologies, and, in a lighter vein, extracts from the J.B. Treatiseon hunting and country life, as well as separate works on hawking, angling and gardening. The abundance of recipes, medical, culinary and veterinary, singly and in collection, have been treated in this Handlist in particular detail. Sarah Ogilvie-Thomson is a former lecturer in language and medieval literature at St Edmund Hall, Oxford.

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Translation and facing text of an important female-authored work from the late middle ages. A Revelation of Purgatory was written by an unnamed woman, almost certainly an anchoress, in Winchester in 1422. It details from a first-person perspective a series of terrifying visions experienced by the author in which she witnesses the purgatorial sufferings of a former friend named Margaret who makes her way through the blazing fires of purgatory tormented by devils, the "worm of conscience", and - uniquely - her two former pets, a fierce little cat and dog. Through her prayer and the prayers she elicits from her own circle of influential priests, the anchoress is eventually able to deliver Margaret to the doors of the heavenly Jerusalem. Made available here in accessible parallel-text format with extended introduction and annotation, the Revelation is an important text: not only does it testify to popular and religious concerns with the afterlife in the late Middle Ages but also underscores the significant role played by women in mitigating the suffering of souls in purgatory by means of their personal interventions. The text also bears witness to female friendship, effective intergender dialogue, and the central role played by an anchoress in those communities with which she interacted, be they spiritual, institutional or personal. Liz Herbert McAvoy is Professor of Medieval Literature at Swansea University.

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Draws on Old Norse literary heritage to explore questions of emotion as both a literary motif and as a social phenomenon. Authors throughout history have relied on the emotional make-up of their readers and audiences to make sense of the behaviours and actions of fictive characters. But how can a narrative voice contained in a text evoke feelings that are ultimately never real or actual, but a figment of a text, a fictive reality created out of words? How does one reconcile interiority - a presumed modern conceptualisation - with medieval emotionality? The volume seeksto address these questions. It positions itself within the larger context of the history of emotion, offering a novel approach to the study of literary representations of emotionality and its staging through voice, performativityand narrative manipulation, probing how emotions are encoded in texts. The author argues that the deceptively laconic portrayal of emotion in the Icelandic sagas and other literature reveals an "emotive script" that favours reticence over expressivity and exposes a narrative convention of emotional subterfuge through narrative silences and the masking of emotion. Focusing on the ambivalent borders between prose and poetic language, she suggests that poeticvocalisation may provide a literary space within which emotive interiority can be expressed. The volume considers a wide range of Old Norse materials - from translated romances through Eddic poetry and Íslendingasögur (sagas of Icelanders) to indigenous romance. Sif Rikhardsdottir is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Iceland and Vice-Chair of the Institute of Research in Literature and Visual Arts.

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An investigation of the depiction of the story of Theophilus in both its original texts, and images. The legend of Theophilus stages an iconic medieval story, its widespread popularity attesting to its grip on the imagination. A pious clerk refuses a promotion, is demoted, becomes furious and makes a contract with the Devil. Later repentant, he seeks out a church and a statue of the Virgin; she appears to him, and he is transformed from apostate to saint. It is illustrated in a variety of media: texts, stained glass, sculpture, and manuscript illuminations. Through a wide range of manuscript illuminations and a selection of French texts, the book explores visual and textual representations of the legend, setting it in its social, cultural and material contexts, and showing how it explores medieval anxieties concerning salvation and identity. The author argues that the legend is a sustained meditation on the power of images, its popularity corresponding with the rise of their role in portraying medieval identity and salvation, and in acting as portals between the limits of the material and the possibilities of the spiritual world Jerry Root is Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature, University of Utah.

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A study of the prophetic tradition in medieval England brings out its influence on contemporary politics and the contemporary elite. The period from the twelfth century to the Wars of the Roses witnessed a dominant tradition of secular prophecy engaged with high political affairs, which this book charts, discussing the production of prophetic texts forecastingthe rule of the whole of Britain by the kings of England. It draws on the prophetic works of familiar authors and names, such as Geoffrey of Monmouth and Thomas of Erceldoune, alongside previously unpublished manuscript material,to study identity formation among medieval political elites. Alongside English prophetic texts, the author explores competing visions of the British future produced in Wales and Scotland, with which English prophetic authors entered into an overt dialogue; this was a cross-border exchange which in many ways shaped the development of this deeply influential discourse. Prophecy is revealed to be a dynamic arena for literary exchange, where alternative imaginings of the future sovereignty of Britain vied for acceptance, and compelled decision making at the highest political levels. Dr Victoria Flood is Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern Literature at the University of Birmingham.

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New essays on the cultural representations of the relationship between Britain and China in the nineteenth century, focussing on the Amherst diplomatic problem. On 29 August 1816, Lord Amherst, exhausted after travelling overnight during an embassy to China, was roughly handled in an attempt to compel him to attend an immediate audience with the Jiaqing Emperor at the Summer Palace of Yuanming Yuan. Fatigued and separated from his diplomatic credentials and ambassadorial robes, Amherst resisted, and left the palace in anger. The emperor, believing he had been insulted, dismissed the embassy without granting it animperial audience and rejected its "tribute" of gifts. This diplomatic incident caused considerable disquiet at the time. Some 200 years later, it is timely in 2016 to consider once again the complex and vexed historical andcultural relations between two of the nineteenth-century world's largest empires. The interdisciplinary essays in this volume engage with the most recent work on British cultural representations of, and exchanges with, Qing China,extending our existing but still provisional understandings of this area of study in new and exciting directions. They cover such subjects as female foot binding; English and Chinese pastoral poetry; translations; representationsof the trade in tea and opium; Tibet; and the political, cultural and environmental contexts of the Amherst embassy itself. Featuring British and Chinese writers such as Edmund Spenser, Wu Cheng'en, Thomas De Quincey, Oscar Wilde, James Hilton, and Zhuangzi, these essays take forward the compelling and highly relevant subject for today of Britain and China's relationship. Peter J. Kitson is Professor of English at the University of East Anglia;Robert Markley is W.D. and Sara E. Trowbridge Professor of English at the University of Illinois. Contributors: Elizabeth Chang, Peter J. Kitson, Eugenia Zuroski-Jenkins, Zhang Longxi, Mingjun Lu, Robert Markley, EunKyung Min, Q.S. Tong

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An examination of how the dead were memorialised in late medieval French literature. Awarded a commendation in the Society for French Studies R. Gapper Book Prize for the best book published in 2016 by a scholar working in French studies in Britain or Ireland. Who am I when I am dead? Several late-medieval French writers used literary representation of the dead as a springboard for exploring the nature of human being. Death is a critical moment for identity definition: one is remembered, forgotten or, worse, misremembered. Works in prose and verse by authors from Alain Chartier to Jean Bouchet record characters' deaths, but what distinguishes them as epitaph fictions is not their commemoration of the deceased, so much as their interrogation of how, by whom, and to what purpose posthumous identity is constituted. Far from rigidly memorialising the dead, they exhibit a productive messiness in the processes by which identity is composed in the moment of its decomposition as a complex interplay between body, voice and text. The cemeteries, hospitals, temples and testaments of fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century literature, from the "Belle Dame sans mercy" querelle to Le Jugement poetic de l'honneur femenin, present a wealth of ambulant corpses, disembodied voices, animated effigies, martyrs for love and material echoes of the past which invite readers to approach epitaphic identity as a challenging question: here lies who, exactly? In its broadest context, this study casts fresh light on ideas of selfhood in medieval culture as well as on contemporary conceptions of the capacities and purposes of literary representation itself. Helen Swift is Associate Professor of Medieval French at St Hilda's College, Oxford.

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Essays examining the complex intertwining and effect of medievalism on modernity - and vice versa. The question of how modernity has influenced medievalism and how medievalism has influenced modernity is the theme of this volume. The opening essays examine the 2001 film Just Visiting's comments on modern anxieties via medievalism; conflations of modernity with both medievalism and the Middle Ages in rewriting sources; the emergence of modernity amid the post-World War I movement The Most Noble Order of Crusaders; António Sardinha's promotion of medievalism as an antidote to modernity; and Mercedes Rubio's medievalism in her feminist commentary on modernity. The eight subsequent articles build on this foundation while discussing remnants of medieval London amid its moderndescendant; Michel Houellebecq's critique of medievalism through his 2011 novel La Carte et le territoire; historical authenticity in Michael Morrow's approach to performing medieval music; contemporary concerns in Ford Madox Brown and David Gentleman's murals; medieval Chester in Catherine A.M. Clarke and Nayan Kulkarni's Hryre (2012); medieval influences on the formation of and debate about modern moral panics; medievalist considerations inmodern repurposings of medieval anchorholds; and medieval sources for Paddy Molloy's Here Be Dragons (2013). The articles thus test the essays' methods and conclusions, even as the essays offer fresh perspectives on the articles. Karl Fugelso is Professor of Art History at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland. Contributors: Edward Breen, Katherine A. Brown, Catherine A.M. Clarke, Louise D'Arcens, Joshua Davies, John LanceGriffith, Mike Horswell, Pedro Martins, Paddy Molloy, Lisa Nalbone, Sarah Salih, Michelle M. Sauer, James L. Smith

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An invigorating annual for those who are interested in medieval textual cultures and open to ways in which diverse post-modern methodologies may be applied to them. Alcuin Blamires, Review of English Studies New Medieval Literatures - now published by Boydell and Brewer - is an annual of work on medieval textual cultures, aiming to engage with intellectual and cultural pluralism in the Middle Ages and now. Its scope is inclusive of work across the theoretical, archival, philological, and historicist methodologies associated with medieval literary studies, and embraces both the British Isles and Europe. Topics in this volume include the political ecology of Havelok the Dane: Thomas Hoccleve and the making of "Chaucer"; and Britain and the Welsh Marches in Fouke le Fitz Waryn. Contributors: Alexis Kellner Becker, Emily Dolmans, Marcel Elias, PhilipKnox, Sebastian Langdell, Jonathan Morton, Marco Nievergelt, George Younge.

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A fresh examination of the four poems of the Cotton manuscript, arguing that they share a profound theological vision. Pearl, Cleanness, Patience and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are accomplished examples of four different literary genres and represent some of the finest poetry in Middle English. They are, by turns, fast and funny, powerfully dramatic, gentle and ironic, telling of painful bereavement and the terror of victims of disaster and violence, as well as the comic bewilderment of people entangled in alarmingly mysterious situations. The anonymous poet's evident delight in the pleasures and artistry of courtly life has led some readers to suggest that he was a gifted but complacent frequenter of courts, his attention dedicated to the wealthy and his sympathies to thepowerful, and moreover, that his poems pay the merest lipservice to religious observance. God and the Gawain-poet argues that, on the contrary, the poet's wide-ranging engagement with all human life explicitly acknowledgesall material creation as God's gift, revelling in its physicality, in bodily senses and movement and the ways a community celebrates itself. Dr Hatt shows how, in exhorting readers to recognize and respond to the narrative of divine gift, he appears as an energetic Christian poet and a humane and compassionate observer. Cecilia A. Hatt gained her D.Phil from Oxford University.

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The questions of fame and reputation are central to Chaucer's writings; the essays here discuss their various treatments and manifestations. Fama, or fame, is a central concern of late medieval literature: where fame came from, who deserved it, whether it was desirable and how it was acquired and kept. An interest in fame was not new but was renewed and rethought within the vernacular revolutions of the later Middle Ages. The work of Geoffrey Chaucer collates received ideas on the subject of fama, both from the classical world and from the work of his contemporaries. Chaucer's place in these intertextual negotiations was readily recognized in his aftermath, as later writers adopted and reworked postures which Chaucer had struck, in their own bids for literary authority. This volume tracks debates onfama which were past, present and future to Chaucer, using his work as a centre point to investigate canon formation in European literature from the late Middle Ages and into the Early Modern period. Isabel Davis is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature at Birkbeck, University of London; Catherine Nall is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. Contributors: Joanna Bellis, Alcuin Blamires, Julia Boffey, Isabel Davis, Stephanie Downes, A.S.G. Edwards, Jamie C. Fumo, Andrew Galloway, Nick Havely, Thomas A. Prendergast, Mike Rodman Jones, William T. Rossiter, Elizaveta Strakhov.

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Documents from the middle ages through to the mid sixteenth century provide rich evidence for London's vibrant dramatic activities. The variety and richness of early London's dramatic activity are extensively revealed here: both from the records of its civic government and livery companies, 1287 to 1558, and in a chronological appendix of information from other sources, such as national and local chronicles (written in Anglo-French, Latin, and English). Civic London to 1558 adds substantially to the amount of published evidence of early drama in London. After the demiseof the multi-day biblical play performed, regularly or occasionally, in the late fourteenth century at Clerkenwell, on the edge of the city, records begin to appear of the London companies (originally craft and trade guilds) paying players/actors to perform at annual company feasts. The records are at first largely of clerks' groups, and subsequently largely of troupes patronized by royalty and the aristocracy. The London troupes of Shakespeare's day descend from here. Also elaborate formal mummings (disguisings) were sent by the city to the court, and were performed as well in company halls. Grand theatrical spectacles were presented in the streets: at Midsummer, for formal royal entries through the city, and for mayoral inaugurations. This collection makes a strong contribution to the known evidence of these activities and of others as well. Anne Lancashire is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Toronto; she has published extensively on medieval and early modern theatre and drama.

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A 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.

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Arthurian 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.

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Essays 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, LenaWånggren

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An 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.

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A new study of the continuations to Chrétien's Conte du Graal shows their crucial influence on the development of Arthurian literature. Chrétien de Troyes's late twelfth-century Conte du Graal has inspired writers and scholars from the moment of its composition to the present day. The challenge represented by its unfinished state was quickly taken up, and over the next fifty years the romance was supplemented by a number of continuations and prologues, which eventually came to dwarf Chrétien's text. In one of the first studies to treat the Conte du Graal and its continuations as a unified work, Thomas Hinton considers the whole corpus as a narrative cycle. Through a combination of close textual readings and manuscript analysis, the author argues that the unity of the narrative depends on a balanced tension between centripetal and centrifugal dynamics. He traces how the authors, scribes and illuminators of the cycle worked to produce coherence, even as they contended with potentially disruptive forces: multiple authorship,differences of intention, and changes in the relation between text, audience and book. Finally, he tackles the long-held orthodoxy that places the Perceval Continuations on the margins of literary history. Widening the scope of enquiry to consider the corpus's influence on thirteenth-century verse romances, this study re-situates the Conte du Graal cycle as a vital element in the evolution of Arthurian literature. Thomas Hinton isJunior Research Fellow in Modern Languages at Jesus College, Oxford.

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New essays demonstrate Gower's mastery of the three languages of medieval England, and provide a thorough exploration of the voices he used and the discourses in which he participated. John Gower wrote in three languages - Latin, French, and English - and their considerable and sometimes competing significance in fourteenth-century England underlies his trilingualism. The essays collected in this volume start from Gower as trilingual poet, exploring Gower's negotiations between them - his adaptation of French sources into his Latin poetry, for example - as well as the work of medieval translators who made Gower's French poetry availablein English. "Translation" is also considered more broadly, as a "carrying over" (its etymological sense) between genres, registers, and contexts, with essays exploring Gower's acts of translation between the idioms of varied literary and non-literary forms; and further essays investigate Gower's writings from literary, historical, linguistic, and codicological perspectives. Overall, the volume bears witness to Gower's merit and his importance to English literary history, and increases our understanding of French and Latin literature composed in England; it also makes it possible to understand and to appreciate fully the shape and significance of Gower's literary achievement and influence, which have sometimes suffered in comparison to Chaucer. ELISABETH DUTTON is Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford. Contributors: Elisabeth Dutton, Jean Pascal Pouzet, Ethan Knapp, Carolyn P. Collette,Elliot Kendall, Robert R. Edwards, George Shuffleton, Nigel Saul, David Carlson, Candace Barrington, Andreea Boboc, Tamara F. O'Callaghan, Stephanie Batkie, Karla Taylor, Brian Gastle, Matthew Irvin, Peter Nicholson, J.A. Burrow,Holly Barbaccia, Kim Zarins, Richard F. Green, Cathy Hume, John Bowers, Andrew Galloway, R.F. Yeager, Martha Driver

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Lancelot is the central romance of the Vulgate Cycle, in which the chivalric elements in Arthur's court come to the fore. These chivalric elements contain the seeds of Arthur's destruction and the dissolution of the Round Table, as Lancelot's love for Guinevere undermines his bond to Arthur; the tension between love, prowess and loyalty is the undercurrent of the long romance which describes the exploits which he performs in her service. It also includes many stories which are chivalric adventures largely unrelated to the main theme, and uses the device of interweaving these stories to form a huge stream of narrative. This series of episodic pictures leads ultimately to the birth of Lancelot's son Galahad, who is destined to become the hero of the Grail. Parts three and four of Lancelot begin with the episode of the false Guinevere, in which Guinevere is accused of being an impostor; Lancelot is then abducted and imprisoned by Morgan le Fay, who out of hatred for Arthur intends to reveal their love to the king. When he escapes, Guinevere is abducted by Meleagant, and Lancelot has to rescue her. In the course of these adventures, the Grail appears for the first time: Lancelot comes to the Burning Tomb, where he learns that his sins will prevent him from succeeding in the Grail Quest; and Gawain reaches the Grail Castle, but fails the test. For afull description of the Vulgate Cycle see the blurb for the complete set.

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The latest volume of Rossetti's correspondence, scrupulously edited by a team of experts. On November 11, 1878, Rossetti wrote to Watts-Dunton: `Friday night exactly made a year since my return to London in 1877 & you know how well I have been the whole of that time.' Indeed, in 1878-79, Rossetti lived what might appear to be a more tranquil version of his first years at Cheyne Walk. The long breach with Ford Madox Brown finally ended, and he began to see his brother regularly again; and he managed to complete a number of commissions, and other paintings. However, as the correspondence collected here show, his depression was seldom far away; he was often unable to work. His repeated letters to Watts-Dunton and Shields, asking them to come over, reveal his need for companionship, preferably in his own home, that was a constant of his character. There are also a number of letters to Jane Morris.

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The themes of magic and the supernatural in medieval romance are here fully explored and put into the context of thinking at the time in this first full study of the subject. The world of medieval romance is one in which magic and the supernatural are constantly present: in otherwordly encounters, in the strange adventures experienced by questing knights, in the experience of the uncanny, and in marvellous objects - rings, potions, amulets, and the celebrated green girdle in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This study looks at a wide range of medieval English romance texts, including the works of Chaucer and Malory, from a broad cultural perspective, to show that while they employ magic in order to create exotic, escapist worlds, they are also grounded in a sense of possibility, and reflect a complex web of inherited and current ideas. The bookopens with a survey of classical and biblical precedents, and of medieval attitudes to magic; subsequent chapters explore the ways that romances both reflect contemporary attitudes and ideas, and imaginatively transform them. Inparticular, the author explores the distinction between the `white magic' of healing and protection, and the more dangerous arts of `nigromancy', black magic. Also addressed is the wider supernatural, including the ways that ideasassociated with human magic can be intensified and developed in depictions of otherworldly practitioners of magic. The ambiguous figures of the enchantress and the shapeshifter are a special focus, and the faery is contrasted with the Christian supernatural - miracles, ghosts, spirits, demons and incubi. Professor CORINNE SAUNDERS Saunders teaches in the Department of English, University of Durham.

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The idea of the quest, crucial to Arthurian literature, investigated in texts, manuscripts, and film. The theme of the quest in Arthurian literature - mainly but not exclusively the Grail quest - is explored in the essays presented here, covering French, Dutch, Norse, German, and English texts. A number of the essays trace the relationship, often negative, between Arthurian chivalry and the Grail ethos. Whereas most of the contributors reflect on the popularity of the Grail quest, several examine the comparative rarity of the Grail in certain literatures and define the elaboration of quest motifs severed from the Grail material. An appendix to the volume offers a filmography that includes all the cinematic treatments of the Grail, either as central theme or minor motif. This book will appeal to students, scholars, and general readers fascinated by the Arthurian and Grail legends. CONTRIBUTORS: NORRIS J. LACY, ANTONIO FURTADO, WILL HASTY, RICHARD TRACHSLER, MARIANNE E. KALINKE, MARTINE MEUWESE, DAVID F. JOHNSON, PHILLIP BOARDMAN, CAROLINE D. ECKHARDT, P.J.C. FIELD, JAMES P. CARLEY, RICHARD BARBER, KEVIN J. HARTY

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New studies of the problem of medieval masculinity, and Chaucer's treatment of it. Issues relating to the male characters and the construction of masculinities in Chaucer's masterpiece of love found and love lost are explored here. Collectively the essays address the question of what it means to be a man in theMiddle Ages, what constitutes masculinity in this era, and how such masculinities are culturally constructed; they seek to advance scholarly understanding of the themes, characters, and actions of Troilus and Criseyde through thehermeneutics of medieval and modern concepts of manliness. Throughout, they argue that Troilus and the other characters, including Criseyde, are subject to multiple and conflicting interpretations, especially in regard to the intersections of their genders with their sexual performances and their conflicted relationships to generic expectations for gendered conduct. Contributors: JOHN M. BOWERS, MICHAEL CALABRESE, HOLLY A. CROCKER, KATE KOPPELMAN,MOLLY MARTIN, MARCIA SMITH MARZEC, GRETCHEN MIESZKOWSKI, JAMES J. PAXSON, TISON PUGH, R. ALLEN SHOAF, ROBERT S. STURGES, ANGELA JANE WEISL, RICHARD ZEIKOWITZ

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The great scholar and palaeographer Sir Frederic Madden (1801-73) was Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum (as it then was) when most of the items in this 'Handlist' were acquired. The manuscripts here represented, from the still expanding Additional collection, provide examples of almost every kind of Middle English prose composition. Many of the items in this 'Handlist' are well known, but some have been previously overlooked and a surprising number remain unedited.

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The latest volume of Rossetti's correspondence, scrupulously edited by a team of experts. On November 11, 1878, Rossetti wrote to Watts-Dunton: `Friday night exactly made a year since my return to London in 1877 & you know how well I have been the whole of that time.' Indeed, in 1878-79, Rossetti lived what might appear to be a more tranquil version of his first years at Cheyne Walk. The long breach with Ford Madox Brown finally ended, and he began to see his brother regularly again; and he managed to complete a number of commissions, and other paintings. However, as the correspondence collected here show, his depression was seldom far away; he was often unable to work. His repeated letters to Watts-Dunton and Shields, asking them to come over, reveal his need for companionship, preferably in his own home, that was a constant of his character. There are also a number of letters to Jane Morris.

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An examination of the way in which the material world is depicted in The Faerie Queene. This book provides a radical reassessment of Spenserian allegory, in particular of The Faerie Queene, in the light of contemporary historical and theoretical interests in space and material culture. It explores the ambiguous and fluctuating attention to materiality, objects, and substance in the poetics of The Faerie Queene, and discusses the way that Spenser's creation of allegorical meaning makes use of this materiality, and transforms it.It suggests further that a critical engagement with materiality (which has been so important to the recent study of early modern drama) must come, in the case of allegorical narrative, through a study of narrative and physical space, and in this context it goes on to provide a reading of the spatial dimensions of the poem - quests and battles, forests, castles and hovels - and the spatial characteristics of Spenser's other writings. The book reaffirms theneed to place Spenser in his historical contexts - philosophical and scientific, military and architectural - in early modern England, Ireland and Europe, but also provides a critical reassessment of this literary historicism. Dr CHRISTOPHER BURLINSON is a Research Fellow in English at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

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Comprehensive survey of the Middle English lyric, one of the most important forms of medieval literature. Winner of a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award The Middle English lyric occupies a place of considerable importance in the history of English literature. Here, for the first time in English, are found many features of formal and thematic importance: they include rhyme scheme, stanzaic form, the carol genre, love poetry in the manner of the troubadour poets, and devotional poems focusing on the love, suffering and compassion of Christ and theVirgin Mary. The essays in this volume aim to provide both background information on and new assessments of the lyric. By treating Middle English lyrics chapter by chapter according to their kinds - poems dealing with love, with religious devotion, with moral, political and popular themes, and those associated with preaching - it provides the awareness of their characteristic cultural contexts and literary modalities necessary for an informed critical reading. Full account is taken of the scholarship upon which our knowledge of these lyrics rests, especially the outstanding contributions of the last few decades and such recent insights as those of gender criticism. Also included are detailed discussions of the valuable information afforded by the widely varying manuscript contexts in which Middle English lyrics survive and of the diverse issues involved in editing these texts. Separate chapters are devotedto the carol, which came to prominence in the fifteenth century, and to Middle Scots lyrics which, at the end of the Middle English lyric tradition, present some sophisticated productions of an entirely new order. Contributors: Julia Boffey, Thomas G. Duncan, John Scattergood, Vincent Gillespie, Christiania Whitehead, Douglas Gray, Karl Reichl, Thorlac Turville-Petre, Alan J. Fletcher, Bernard O'Donoghue, Sarah Stanbury and Alasdair A. MacDonald. THOMAS G. DUNCAN is Honorary Senior Lecturer, School of English, University of St Andrews

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Pastoral and locus amoenus traditions in Medieval English literature, and the early mythologisation of English landscape, space and identity through pastoral topoi. In its exploration of literary representations of ideal landscapes and the production of English identity across Latin and vernacular texts from Bede to Chaucer, this study looks in particular at pastoral and locus amoenustraditions in Medieval English literature, and the early mythologisation of English landscape, space and identity through pastoral topoi. From Bede's Ecclesiastical History and its seminal interpretation of Britain as thedelightful island, the study moves through representations of landscape in Old English poetry to the exploitation of the symbolic potential of their local landscapes by regional monastic houses in twelfth- and thirteenth-century texts and pastoral conventions, performances and the idea of the city in the fourteenth century. Introductory and concluding sections form bridges to current scholarship on representations of Englishness through pastoral topoi in the Early Modern period. Catherine A.M. Clarke is Professor of English, University of Southampton.

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The sixth volume of Rossetti's correspondence covers a particularly energetic period of artistic activity and dealings with patrons, his new agent C.A. Howell, dealers and friends. Rossetti's return to Kelmscott in September 1872, following his breakdown and recovery charted in volume 5, commenced a period of artistic activity which was at its most energetic in the years 1873-1874. Because of the isolationof Kelmscott, he engaged C.A. Howell as his agent, and trusted him to find new buyers and assist in negotiations with his principal patrons. A complex character who " whirled us...in a tornado of lies", he could nevertheless sellpictures, negotiate with mercurial buyers and tolerate Rossetti's peremptory ways. We are fortunate, too, in having Rossetti's letters to the demanding patron Frederick Leyland. The letters demonstrate that in Leyland, Rossettimore than met his match, but neither the friendship nor the patronage foundered. Previously valued friends exhausted his patience: Swinburne, for example, is "the crowning nuisance of the whole world." At the same time,he unreservedly acknowledged debts and obligations, in particular to F.M. Brown and his brother William (to both of whom he owed "more in life" than to anyone else); and friends in need could always count on his generosity. WhenJames Hannay's death left his family in uncertain circumstances, Rossetti acted immediately: "I have no family of my own to provide for, & am therefore doubly bound to do what I can for an old friend's children."

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The essays in this collection present a range of new ideas and approaches in Malory studies, looking again [as the title suggests] at several of the most debated critical points. A number of articles focus closely on the implications of the production of the text, ranging from the repercussions of the working habits of the Winchester scribes, as well as of Malory's printers and editors, to a reassessment of Caxton's Preface. There are also nuanced readingsof geography and politics in the Morte Darthur and its fifteenth-century contexts, and analyses of text and context in relation to the role of women, character and theme in the Morte, including the important questions of worshyp and mesure, as well as the issues of coherence and genre.

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Drawing on sources from archaeology and written texts, the author brings out the full significance of trees in both pagan and Christian Anglo-Saxon religion. Trees were of fundamental importance in Anglo-Saxon material culture - but they were also a powerful presence in Anglo-Saxon religion before and after the introduction of Christianity. This book shows that they remained prominentin early English Christianity, and indeed that they may have played a crucial role in mediating the transition between ancient beliefs and the new faith. It argues that certain characteristics of sacred trees in England can be determined from insular contexts alone, independent of comparative evidence from culturally related peoples. This nevertheless suggests the existence of traditions comparable to those found in Scandinavia and Germany. Tree symbolismhelped early English Christians to understand how the beliefs of their ancestors about trees, posts, and pillars paralleled the appearance of similar objects in the Old Testament. In this way, the religious symbols of their forebears were aligned with precursors to the cross in Scripture. Literary evidence from England and Scandinavia similarly indicates a shared tradition of associations between the bodies of humans, trees, and other plant-life. Though potentially ancient, these ideas flourished amongst the abundance of vegetative symbolism found in the Christian tradition. Michael Bintley is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature at Canterbury Christ Church University.

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Covering a period from the Ancient World to the present day, the book suggests that until very recently, falsettists and counter-tenors have been distinct vocal genres. `The use of high male voices in the past has long been one of the most seriously misunderstood areas of musical scholarship and practice. In opening up this rich subject (to readers of all sorts) with refreshingly clear perspectives and plenty of new material, Simon Ravens' well-researched book goes a very long way to rectifying matters. Ravens writes damnably well, and if the story that emerges is necessarily a complex one, his treatment of it is always engagingly comprehensible.' ANDREW PARROTT Tracing the origins, influences and development of falsetto singing in Western music, Simon Ravens offers a revisionist history of high male singing from the Ancient Greeks to Michael Jackson. This history embraces not just singers of counter-tenor and alto parts up to and including our own time but the castrati of the Ancient world, the male sopranists of late Medieval and Renaissance Europe, and the dual-register tenors of the Baroque and Classical periods. Musical aesthetics aside, to understand the changing ways men have sung high, it is also vital to address extra-musical factors - which are themselves in a state of flux. Tothis end, Ravens illuminates his chronological survey by exploring topics as diverse as human physiology, the stereotyping of national characters, gender identity, and the changing of boys' voices. The result is a complex and fascinating history sure to appeal not only to music scholars but to performers and all those with an interest particularly in early music. Simon Ravens is a performer, writer, and director of Musica Contexta, with whom hehas performed in Britain and Europe, regularly broadcast, and made numerous acclaimed recordings. Ravens had previously founded and directed Australasia's foremost early music choir, the Tudor Consort. Between 2002 and 2007 his regular monthly column Ravens View appeared in the Early Music Review, to which he still regularly contributes.

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The second of four volumes containing the edited texts, commentaries and source notes for each of the nearly nine hundred occasions of special worship and for each of the annual commemorations in England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Since the sixteenth century, the governments and established churches of the British Isles have summoned the nation to special acts of public worship during periods of anxiety and crisis, at times of celebration, or for annual commemoration and remembrance. These special prayers, special days of worship and anniversary commemorations were national events, reaching into every parish in England and Wales, in Scotland, and in Ireland. They had considerable religious, ecclesiastical, political, ideological, moral and social significance, and they produced important texts: proclamations, council orders, addresses and - in England and Wales, and in Ireland - prayers or complete liturgieswhich for specified periods supplemented or replaced the services in the Book of Common Prayer. Many of these acts of special worship and most of the texts have escaped historical notice. National Prayers. Special Worship since the Reformation, in four volumes, provides the edited texts, commentaries and source notes for each of the nearly nine hundred occasions of special worship, and for each of the annual commemorations. The second volume,General Fasts, Thanksgivings and Special Prayers in the British Isles 1689-1870, contains the texts and commentaries for the numerous and frequent special prayers, fast days and thanksgivings during the wars which consolidated the 1688 revolution, through the long imperial wars of the eighteenth century, and the wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France, as well as prayers and thanksgivings associated with Jacobite risings, epidemics, socialunrest, and episodes in the lives of the kings and queens.

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This book will appeal not only to historians and geographers, but to many who maintain a deep interest in the British countryside and its past, and to those who continue to share a fascination for the Second World War, in particular the 'home front'. The Battle of the Fields tells the story of rural community and authority in Britain during the Second World War by looking at the County War Agricultural Executive Committees. From 1939 they were imbued with powers to transform British farming to combat the loss of food imports caused by German naval activity and initial European mainland successes. Their powers were sweeping and draconian. When fully exercised against recalcitrant farmers, dispossession in part or whole could and did result. This book includes the most detailed analysis of these dispossessions including the tragic case of Ray Walden, the Hampshire farmer who was killed by police after refusing to leave hisfarmhouse in 1940. The committees were deemed successful by Whitehall as harbingers of modernity: mechanization, draining, artificial fertilizers, reclamation of heaths, marshes and woodlands. We now deplore some of these changes but Britain did not starve, in large part thanks to their efforts. This book will appeal not only to historians and geographers, but to many who maintain a deep interest in the British countryside and its past, and tothose who continue to share a fascination for the Second World War, in particular the "home front". It will also demonstrate to all who are anxious about food security in the modern age how this question was dealt with 70 years ago. BRIAN SHORT is Emeritus Professor of Historical Geography at the University of Sussex, and formerly Dean of School and Head of the Department of Geography.

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The seventeenth century was one of the most dramatic periods in Scotland's history, with two political revolutions, intense religious strife culminating in the beginnings of toleration, and the modernisation of the state and its infrastructure. This book focuses on the history that the Scots themselves made. The seventeenth century was one of the most dramatic periods in Scotland's history, with two political revolutions, intense religious strife culminating in the beginnings of toleration, and the modernisation of the state and its infrastructure. This book focuses on the history that the Scots themselves made. Previous conceptualisations of Scotland's "seventeenth century" have tended to define it as falling between 1603 and 1707 - the union of crowns and the union of parliaments. In contrast, this book asks how seventeenth-century Scotland would look if we focused on things that the Scots themselves wanted and chose to do. Here the key organising dates are not 1603 and 1707 but 1638and 1689: the covenanting revolution and the Glorious Revolution. Within that framework, the book develops several core themes. One is regional and local: the book looks at the Highlands and the Anglo-Scottish Borders. The increasing importance of money in politics and the growing commercialisation of Scottish society is a further theme addressed. Chapters on this theme, like those on the nature of the Scottish Revolution, also discuss central governmentand illustrate the growth of the state. A third theme is political thought and the world of ideas. The intellectual landscape of seventeenth-century Scotland has often been perceived as less important and less innovative, and suchperceptions are explored and in some cases challenged in this volume. Two stories have tended to dominate the historiography of seventeenth-century Scotland: Anglo-Scottish relations and religious politics. One of the recentleitmotifs of early modern British history has been the stress on the "Britishness" of that history and the interaction between the three kingdoms which constituted the "Atlantic archipelago". The two revolutions at the heart ofthe book were definitely Scottish, even though they were affected by events elsewhere. This is Scottish history, but Scottish history which recognises and is informed by a British context where appropriate. The interconnected nature of religion and politics is reflected in almost every contribution to this volume. SHARON ADAMS is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Freiburg. JULIAN GOODARE is Reader in History at the University of Edinburgh. Contributors: Sharon Adams, Caroline Erskine, Julian Goodare, Anna Groundwater, Maurice Lee Jnr, Danielle McCormack, Alasdair Raffe, Laura Rayner, Sherrilynn Theiss, Sally Tuckett, Douglas Watt

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Both a practical guide to, and a reflection on, best practice in making archaeology available to a wide audience. In a relatively short period of time the study of archaeology has evolved from an antiquarian interest to a specialised scientific activity. As each new method and technique is developed, and each new specialism is created, the challenge of making archaeology available as a learning resource grows with it. This book, the first to deal with the subject in such depth, examines the place of education and outreach within the wider archaeological community. Written by one of the UK's leading experts in the field, it charts the difficult development of 'education and archaeology'. With numerous informative case studies, from public access to the Roman circus at Colchester to education projects in Athens at Hadrian's Wall, among others, the book examines how the teaching of archaeology has reached the point at which it is today, summarises where that is in the author's view, and suggests areas for further enquiry. By drawing upon many decades of experience at the front line of archaeological education, the author has produced a key text that will play a major role in the continuing development of the heritage industry. . MIKE CORBISHLEY lectures in heritage education at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London.

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An examination of museums in China, surveying their development from the nineteenth century, and looking in particular at their incredible recent proliferation. Museums in China have undergone tremendous transformations since they first appeared in the country in the late nineteenth century. Futuristic, state-of-the-art museums have today become symbols of China's global cultural, economic and technological prominence, and over the last two decades, the number of Chinese museums has increased at an unprecedented rate, with China set to become the country with the highest number of museums in the world. But why have museums become so important? This book, based on extensive research in a number of the museums themselves, examines recent changes in their display methods, narratives, actors and architectural style. It also considers their representations of Chinese national identity, millenarian history and extraordinary cultural diversity. Through an analysis of the changes affecting not only what we observe through museums, but also the very medium of observation (i.e. museums themselves), this book provides a unique, original and timely exploration of the ongoing changes affecting Chinese society, and an evaluation of their consequences. Dr Marzia Varutti is apost-doctoral fellow at the Centre for Museum Studies, Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo.

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