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The churches and manuscripts of medieval Europe incessantly juxtapose imagery depicting sacred themes with likenesses of the crudest and basest nature. Drawing on the contrast between Bakhtin's concepts of the carnivalesque and the domain of the law, this book examines such opposites in six major works of pre-1350 Spanish literature.
First published in 1998, this valuable reference work offers concise, expert answers to questions on all aspects of life and culture in Medieval England, including art, architecture, law, literature, kings, women, music, commerce, technology, warfare and religion. This wide-ranging text encompasses English social, cultural, and political life from the Anglo-Saxon invasions in the fifth century to the turn of the sixteenth century, as well as its ties to the Celtic world of Wales, Scotland and Ireland, the French and Anglo-Norman world of the Continent and the Viking and Scandinavian world of the North Sea. A range of topics are discussed from Sedulius to Skelton, from Wulfstan of York to Reg...
She, This in Blak takes a fresh look at Chaucer's great Trojan romance, Troilus and Criseyde, in light of recent scholarship on late scholastic discourses on representation and causality as they pertain to human perception and judgment. This study also contributes to a growing literature on the impact of scholastic psychological theory upon contemporary cultural forms by examining the way in which late medieval accounts of perception and cognition can illuminate the construction of the poem's subjects, including one of the most compelling and controversial figures in medieval literature, Chaucer's Criseyde. By examining Chaucer's depiction of Troilus, Pandarus, and Criseyde within this contemporary cultural context, She, This in Blak offers a better grounded and more historically illuminating view of the poem than is provided by psychological readings based on modern constructions of intentionality.
The Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain vereint erstmals wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse zu Multilingualität und Interkulturalität im mittelalterlichen Britannien und bietet mehr als 600 fundierte Einträge zu Schlüsselpersonen, Zusammenhängen und Einflüssen in der Literatur vom fünften bis sechzehnten Jahrhundert. - Einzigartiger multilingualer, interkultureller Ansatz und die neuesten wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse. Das gesamte Mittelalter und die Bandbreite literarischer Sprachen werden abgedeckt. - Über 600 fundierte, verständliche Einträge zu Schlüsselpersonen, Texten, kritischen Debatten, Methoden, kulturellen Zusammenhängen sowie verwandte Terminologie. - Repräs...
Profiles eight dynamic and diverse congregations, identifiying the characteristics that make each distinctive while explaining how any church can apply their ideas locally, in a resource that also lists more than 300 recommended Protestant congregations. Original.
This handbook addresses Chaucer's poetry in the context of several disciplines, including late medieval philosophy and science, Mediterranean culture, comparative European literature, vernacular theology and popular devotion.
The first comprehensive study of heroic women figures in Anglo-Saxon literature investigates English secular and religious prose and poetry from the seventh to the eleventh centuries. Given the paucity of surviving literature from the Anglo-Saxon period, the works which feature major women characters -- often portrayed as heroes -- seem surprisingly numerous. Even more striking is the strength of the female characterizations, given the medieval social ideal of women as peaceful, passive members of society. The task of this study is to examine the existing sources afresh, asking new questions about the depictions of women in the literature of the period. Particular attention is focused on the failed, possibly adulterous women of 'The Wife's Lament' and 'Wulf and Eadwacer', the monstrous mother of Grendel in 'Beowulf', and the chaste but heroic figures and saints Judith, Juliana, and Elene. The book relies for its analysis on recent and standard texts in Anglo-Saxon studies and literature, as well as a thorough grounding in Latin and vernacular historical documents and Anglo-Saxon writings other than the focal literary texts.
Contrary to popular belief, the medieval religious imagination did not restrict itself to masculine images of God but envisaged the divine in multiple forms. In fact, the God of medieval Christendom was the Father of only one Son but many daughters—including Lady Philosophy, Lady Love, Dame Nature, and Eternal Wisdom. God and the Goddesses is a study in medieval imaginative theology, examining the numerous daughters of God who appear in allegorical poems, theological fictions, and the visions of holy women. We have tended to understand these deities as mere personifications and poetic figures, but that, Barbara Newman contends, is a mistake. These goddesses are neither pagan survivals nor ...
Theorizing Legal Personhood in Late Medieval England is a collection of eleven essays that explore what might be distinctly medieval and particularly English about legal personhood vis-à-vis the jurisdictional pluralism of late medieval England. Spanning the mid-thirteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries, the essays in this volume draw on common law, statute law, canon law and natural law in order to investigate emerging and shifting definitions of personhood at the confluence of legal and literary imaginations. These essays contribute new insights into the workings of specific literary texts and provide us with a better grasp of the cultural work of legal argument within the histories of ethics, of the self, and of Eurocentrism. Contributors are Valerie Allen, Candace Barrington, Conrad van Dijk, Toy Fung Tung, Helen Hickey, Andrew Hope, Jana Mathews, Anthony Musson, Eve Salisbury, Jamie Taylor and R.F. Yeager.
A detailed study of Chaucer's fascination with communication as a reciprocal process between speaker and listener', which considers the importance of discourse for social order and the ways in which Chaucer used it against authority.