Malory's Library: The Sources of the Morte Darthur
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New study of Malory's sources reveals much about how the work was created and about Malory himself.
The first book-length study of the sources of Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur since 1921 and the first comprehensive study since that of Vinaver's three-volume edition, Malory's Library collects the results of overone hundred years of scholarship, providing new discussions of the major sources of the eight tales recognised in the standard edition. It also, for the first time, explores possible minor sources of the Morte Darthur, evaluating the case for them to see what conclusions may be drawn of Malory's life, work, and mental furnishings. In so doing, it clarifies the process by which Malory created his work. It shows that Malory carried an eclectic body of literature in his mind and worked at least partly from memory; and it illuminates his interest in characters of his own social class, the breadth of his enthusiasm for Arthurian literature, and the depth of his commitment to provide his countrymen with "the hoole book of kyng Arthur and of his noble knyghtes of the Round Table".
RALPH NORRIS teaches in the Department of English at Kennesaw State University.
Andy Orchard
A Critical Companion to Beowulf
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A complete guide to the text and context of the most famous Old English poem. "A generous, energetic, engaging work". JOSEPHINE BLOOMFIELD, OHIO UNIVERSITY.
Beowulf is the best known and most closely studied literary work surviving from Anglo-Saxon England, and the modern reader is faced with a bewildering number and variety of interpretations about such basic matters as the date, provenance, and significance of the poem. A Critical Companion to Beowulf addresses these and other issues, reviewing and synthesising previous scholarship, as well as offering fresh perspectives. After an initial introduction to the poem, attention is focused on such matters as the manuscript context and approaches to dating the poem, before a lengthy discussion of the particular style, diction, and structure of this most idiosyncratic of Old English texts. The background to the poem is considered not simply with respect to historical and legendary material, but also in the context of myth and fable. The specific roles of selected individual characters, both major and minor, are assessed, and in a chapter on the degree of piety and Latin-derived erudition implied by the text consideration is given to the original intended audience and perceived purpose of the poem. A final chapter describes therange of critical approaches which have been applied to the poem in the past, and points towards directions for future study.
ANDY ORCHARD is Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, University of Oxford.
Daniel Anlezark, Daniel Anlezark
The Old English Dialogues of Solomon and Saturn
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First modern edition, with facing translation, of two of the most mysterious Old English texts extant.
The dialogues of Solomon and Saturn, found in MSS Corpus Christi College Cambridge 422 and 41, are some of the most complex Old English texts to survive. The first two dialogues, in verse and prose, present the pagan god Saturn inhuman form interrogating King Solomon about the mysterious powers of the Pater Noster, while in a second poem the two discuss in enigmatic terms a range of topics, from the power of books to the limits of free will. This newedition - the first to appear for some 150 years - presents a parallel text and translation, accompanied by notes and commentary. The volume also includes a full introduction, examining the evidence pointing to the influence of Irish continental learning on the dialogues' style and content; arguing that the circle which produced the dialogues was located at Glastonbury in the early tenth century, and included the young Dunstan, future archbishop of Canterbury; and locating the texts in the context of the learned riddling tradition, and philosophical debates current in the ninth and tenth centuries.
Dr DANIEL ANLEZARK teaches in the Department of English at the Universityof Sydney.
Amanda Hopkins, Cory James Rushton
The Erotic in the Literature of Medieval Britain
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An examination of the erotic in medieval literature which includes articles on the role of clothing and nudity, the tension between eroticism and transgression and religion and the erotic.
This volume examines the erotic in the literature of medieval Britain, primarily in Middle English, but also in Latin, Welsh and Old French. Seeking to discover the nature of the erotic and how it differs from modern erotics, thecontributors address topics such as the Wife of Bath's opinions on marital eroticism, the role of clothing and nudity, the tension between eroticism and transgression, the interplay between religion and the erotic, and the hedonistic horrors of the cannibalistic Giant of Mont St Michel.
Amanda Hopkins teaches in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies and the department of French at the University of Warwick. Cory James Rushton is in the Department of English at St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Contributors: Anthony Bale, Jane Bliss, Michael Cichon, Thomas H. Crofts III, Alex Davis, Kristina Hildebrand, Amanda Hopkins,Simon Meecham-Jones, Sue Niebrzydowski, Margaret Robson, Robert Rouse, Cory James Rushton, Corinne Saunders.
Cynthia J. Brown
The Cultural and Political Legacy of Anne de Bretagne
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A queen who helped define the cultural landscape of her era.
As duchess of Brittany [1491-1514] and twice queen of France [1491-98; 1498-1514], Anne de Bretagne set a benchmark by which to measure the status of female authority in Europe at the dawn of the Renaissance. Although at times a traditional political pawn, when men who ruled her life were involved in reshaping European alliances, Anne was directly or indirectly involved with the principal political and religious European leaders of her time and helped define the cultural landscape of her era. Taking a variety of cross-disciplinary perspectives, these ten essays by art historians, literary specialists, historians, and political scientists contribute to the ongoing discussion ofAnne de Bretagne and seek to prompt further investigations into her cultural and political impact. At the same time, they offer insight of a broader nature into related areas of intellectual interest - patronage, the history of the book, the power and definition of queenship and the interpretation of politico-cultural documents and court spectacles - thereby confirming the extensive nature of Anne's legacy.
CYNTHIA J. BROWN is Professor of French at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Phillipa Hardman
The Matter of Identity in Medieval Romance
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Twelve essays address a central concern of medieval romance, the matter of identity.
Identity is a central concern of medieval romance. Here it is approached through essays on issues of origin and parentage, transformation and identity, and fundamental questions of what constitutes the human. The construction of knightly identity through education and testing is explored, and placed in relation to female identity; the significance of the motif of doubling is studied. Shifting perceptions of identities are traced through the histories of specific texts, and the identity of romance itself is the subject of several essays discussing ideas of genre (the overlap between romance and hagiography is a theme linking a number of articles in the collection). Medieval romanceis shown as a marketable commodity in the printed output of William Copland, and as an opportunity for literary experimentation in the work of John Metham. The texts discussed include: Chevalere Assigne, Sir Gowther, Sir Ysumbras, Beves of Hamtoun, Robert of Cisyle, the Fierabras romances, Breton lays, Thomas's Tristan and Marie de France's Eliduc.
Contributors: W.A. DAVENPORT, JOANNE CHARBONNEAU, CORINNE SAUNDERS, AMANDA HOPKINS, MORGAN DICKSON, MARIANNE AILES, JUDITH WEISS, JOHN SIMONS, RHIANNON PURDIE, MALDWYN MILLS, A.S.G. EDWARDS, ROGER DALRYMPLE.
Ruth Harvey, Linda Paterson
The Troubadour Tensos and Partimens [3 volume set]
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A major contribution to knowledge of medieval Occitan literature.
Best known for their love-songs and invention of Courtly Love, the troubadours were also fascinated by debate. Like their contemporaries throughout the medieval world who sharpened their wit and intellect on scholastic disputations, the troubadours devised their entire, multifaceted lyric production on the basis of many forms of dialogue: intertextual debates, satirical challenges, self-questioning, mini-dramas. This debating process is nowhere more in evidence than in the troubadour tensos and partimens.
This 3 volume critical edition makes available for the first time the massive corpus of 160 tensos and partimens involving real speakers.They supply a mine of new information on the medieval Occitan language, contemporary politics, courtly and judicial mores, and attitudes to gender, class, and ethnic stereotypes, often presenting a picture of courtly life, love and sexual relations very different from that of the better-known love-lyric. The edition meets the highest standards of scholarly rigour: the notes and critical apparatus are as minimal as scholarly probity allows but alwayshelpful and well-argued, taking due account of previous scholarship, and the translations clear, accurate and elegant. A cumulative index, bibliography and glossary aid access to these volumes which fill one of the last major gapsin our knowledge of medieval Occitan literature.
RUTH HARVEY is Professor of medieval Occitan literature at Royal Holloway, University of London; LINDA PATERSON is Professor Emerita of French at the University of Warwick. They were assisted by Anna Radaelli.
William T. Rossiter
Chaucer and Petrarch
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First full study of Chaucer's readings and translations of Petrarch suggests a far greater influence than has hitherto been accepted.
Despite the fact that Chaucer introduced Petrarch's work into England in the late fourteenth century, Petrarch's influence has been very little studied. This book, the first full-length study of Chaucer's reading and translation of Petrarch, examines Chaucer's translations of Petrarch's Latin prose and Italian poetry against the backdrop of his experience of Italy, gained through his travels there in the 1370s, his interaction with Italians in London, andhis reading of the other two great Italian medieval poets, Boccaccio and Dante. The book also considers Chaucer's engagement with early Italian humanism and the nature of translation in the fourteenth century, including a preliminary examination of adaptations of Chaucer's pronouncements upon translation and literary production. Chaucer's adaptations of Petrarch's Latin tale of Griselda and the sonnet "S'amor non è", as the Clerk's Tale and the "Canticus Troili" from Troilus and Criseyde respectively, illustrate his various translative strategies. Furthermore, Chaucer's references to Petrarch in his prologue to the Clerk's Tale and in the Monk's Tale provide a means of gauging the intellectual relationship between two of the most important poets of the time.
WILLIAM T. ROSSITER is Senior Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern Literature, University of East Anglia.
Andrew Zurcher
Spenser's Legal Language
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Highlights Spenser's use of legal thought and language, resulting in new insights into his work.
Both English language and English political life underwent unprecedented change in the sixteenth century, creating acute linguistic and legal crises that, in Elizabeth I's later years, intersected in the pioneering poetry of Edmund Spenser. This volume explores Spenser's linguistic experimentation and his engagement with political, and particularly legal, thought and language in his major works, demonstrating by thorough lexical analysis and illustrative readings how Spenser figured the nation both descriptively and prescriptively. As a study of the language of The Faerie Queene, the book restores Spenser to his rightful place as a bold but scholarly linguistic innovator, the equal of contemporaries such as Skelton, Shakespeare, Nashe, and Donne. As an enquiry into Spenser's interest in contemporary politics and law, it exposes his serial and contentious engagements in contemporary political theory and practice, and indicates his substantial influence on his contemporaries and successors. Spenser emerges in this book as a poet peculiarly preoccupied with fashioning, or `applying', his reader to the lawful use of words and deeds.
ANDREW ZURCHER is Tutor and Director of Studies in English at Queens' College Cambridge.
Gloria Allaire, Gloria Allaire
Italian Literature I
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The Arthurian Archives series of texts and editions in translation, edited by Norris J. Lacy, makes a start on Italian Arthurian material, with a 14c Tristan text.
This is the first critical edition with English translation of the prose compilation Tristano panciatichiano, preserved in a unique manuscript in the Biblioteca Nazionale of Florence (MS Panc. 33); it is the first time theItalian text has been published in its entirety in any form. Assembled by the mid-fourteenth century, the manuscript is an original compilation in Italian based on several French models: the Queste del San Graal, Josephd'Arimathie, the Mort Artu, and notably, the Roman de Tristan en prose. While the edition itself will be of great interest, the translation into English is a major opportunity for Arthurians and other medievalists, and furnishes important new evidence for the study of Arthurian material in Italy. Apparatus includes a finding list of Arthurian manuscripts produced, owned or read by Italians; a select bibliography; and an index of proper names found in the narrative.
Pamela M. King
The York Mystery Cycle and the Worship of the City
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An investigation into the connections between the York Plays, religious observance, and the role played by the city itself.
WINNER of the 2007 David Bevington Prize
The York Play is the earliest near-complete English civic mystery cycle. It evolved constantly throughout its long performance history, but the text that was recorded in the YorkRegister shows that it was already a mature and elaborate civic festival by the time it was written down. This study uncovers the Cycle's connection with worship in York, in the sense both of devotional practice and of civichonour, informing a particular period in the cultural history of the city. The pageants in the Register show in their different ways how the community which devised and performed the Cycle regarded the celebration of the great summer feast of Corpus Christi. Moreover the principles of selection that give the Cycle its structure reflect the broader pattern of the liturgical calendar, with its other feasts and fasts. The Cycle bears witness not only to thepractices of religious observance in York, but also to the ecclesiastical politics in which the city was caught up from the very beginning of the fifteenth century.
PAMELA KING is Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Bristol.
Raluca L. Radulescu, Cory James Rushton
A Companion to Medieval Popular Romance
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A comprehensive guide to the medieval popular romance, one of the age's most important literary forms.
Popular romance was one of the most wide-spread forms of literature in the middle ages, yet despite its cultural centrality, and its fundamental importance for later literary developments, the genre has defied precise definition,its subject matter ranging from tales of chivalric adventure, to saintly women, and monsters who become human. The essays in this collection seek to provide an inclusive and thorough examination of romance. They provide contexts,definitions, and explanations for the genre, particularly in, but not limited to, an English context. Topics covered include genre and literary classification; race and ethnicity; gender; orality and performance; the romance and young readers; metre and form; printing culture; and reception.
CONTRIBUTORS: ROSALIND FIELD, RALUCA L. RADULESCU, MALDWYN MILLS, GILLIAN ROGERS, JENNIFER FELLOWS, THOMAS H. CROFTS, ROBERT ALLEN ROUSE, JOANNE CHARBONNEAU, DESIREE CROMWELL, AD PUTTER, KARL REICHL, PHILLIPA HARDMAN, CORY JAMES RUSHTON
Karen Cherewatuk, K.S. Whetter
The Arthurian Way of Death
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The motif of death and dying traced through over a thousand years of the English Arthurian tradition.
It is arguably the tragic end to Arthur's kingdom which gives the myth its exceptional resonance and power. The essays in this volume explore the presentation of death and dying in Arthurian literature and film produced in Englandand America from the middle ages to the modern day. Authors, texts and topics covered include Geoffrey of Monmouth, the chronicle tradition, and the alliterative Morte Arthure; Gawain and the Green Knight, Ywain and Gawain, the stanzaic Morte Arthur, and Malory's Morte Darthur; Tennyson's Idylls, Pyle's retelling of the myth for American children, David Jones, T.H. White, Donald Barthelme, Rosalind Miles and Parke Godwin. Featured films include Knight Rider, Excalibur, First Knight, and King Arthur.
CONTRIBUTORS: Sian Echard, Edward Donald Kennedy, Karen Cherewatuk, Michael W. Twomey, K. S. Whetter, Thomas Crofts, MichaelWenthe, Lisa Robeson, Cory James Rushton, Janina P. Traxler, James Noble, Julie Nelson Couch, Samantha Rayner, Kevin J. Harty
Alison Wiggins, Rosalind Field
Guy of Warwick: Icon and Ancestor
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The first interdisciplinary enquiry into a key figure in medieval and early modern culture.
Guy of Warwick is England's other Arthur. Elevated to the status of national hero, his legend occupied a central place in the nation's cultural heritage from the Middle Ages to the modern period. Guy of Warwick: Icon and Ancestor spans the Guy tradition from its beginnings in Anglo-Norman and Middle English romance right through to the plays and prints of the early modern period and Spenser's Faerie Queene, including the visual tradition in manuscript illustration and material culture as well as the intersection of the legend with local and national history. This volume addresses important questions regarding the continuities and remaking of romance material, and therelation between life and literature. Topics discussed are sensitive to current critical concerns and include translation, reception, magnate ambition, East-West relations, the construction of "Englishness" and national identity,and the literary value of "popular" romance.
ALISON WIGGINS is Lecturer in English Language at the University of Glasgow; ROSALIND FIELD is Reader in Medieval Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Note on ebook images: Due to limited rights we are unable to make all images in this book available in the ebook version. If you'd like to purchase the ebook regardless, please email us on trading@boydell.co.uk to obtain a PDF of the images. We apologise for the inconvenience caused.
CONTRIBUTORS: JUDITH WEISS, MARIANNE AILES, IVANA DJORDJEVIC, ROSALIND FIELD, ALISON WIGGINS, A.S.G. EDWARDS, ROBERT ALLEN ROUSE, DAVID GRIFFITH, MARTHA W. DRIVER, SIAN ECHARD, ANDREW KING, HELEN COOPER
Marcus Waithe
William Morris's Utopia of Strangers
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William Morris's conception of hospitality as a form of political tolerance is surveyed within the context of Victorian medievalism.
It is commonly argued that William Morris's notion of the good society is uniquely tolerant - a claim which this book tests, asking whether Victorian medievalism and the associated ideal of hospitality offered Morris the resourcesto develop a new conception of utopia, characterized by openness rather than classical exclusivity. This central theme is addressed across a range of artistic and intellectual contexts, from Victorian neo-feudalism to socialism and the Arts and Crafts Movement, and drawing from work in literature, architecture, anthropology, political theory, law, art history and translation. Together with an analysis of the roots and legacy of Morris's work, the book offers a detailed survey of his many projects.
Dr MARCUS WAITHE lectures in Victorian Literature at the University of Sheffield.
Karl Fugelso
Studies in Medievalism XVII
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New essays attempt to survey and map out the increasingly significant discipline of medievalism.
Medievalism has been attracting considerable scholarly attention in recent years. But it is also suffering from something of an identity crisis. Where are its chronological and geographical boundaries? How does it relate to the Middle Ages? Does it comprise neomedievalism, pseudomedievalism, and other "medievalisms"? Studies in Medievalism XVII directly addresses these and related questions via a series of specially-commissioned essays from some of the most well-known scholars in the field; they explore its origins, survey the growth of the subject, and attempt various definitions. The volume then presents seven articles that often test the boundaries of medievalism: they look at echoes of medieval bestiaries in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, the influence of the Niebelungenlied on Wagner's Ring cycle, representations of King Alfred in two works by Dickens, medieval tropes in John Bale's Reformist plays, authenticity in Sigrid Undset's novel Kristin Lavransdatter, incidental medievalism in Handel's opera Rodelinda, and editing in the audio version of Seamus Heaney's Beowulf.
CONTRIBUTORS: KATHLEEN VERDUIN, CLARE A. SIMMONS, NILS HOLGER PETERSEN, TOM SHIPPEY, GWENDOLYN A. MORGAN, M. J. TOSWELL, ELIZABETH EMERY, KARL FUGELSO, EMILY WALKER HEADY, MARK B. SPENCER, GAIL ORGELFINGER, DOUGLAS RYAN VAN BENTHUYSEN, THEA CERVONE, WERNER WUNDERLICH, EDWARD R. HAYMES
Brycchan Carey, Peter J. Kitson
Slavery and the Cultures of Abolition
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Slavery as depicted in literature and culture is examined in this wide-ranging collection.
On 25 March 1807, the bill for the abolition of the Slave Trade within the British colonies was passed by an overwhelming majority in the House of Commons, becoming law from 1 May. This new collection of essays marks this crucialbut conflicted historical moment and its troublesome legacies. They discuss the literary and cultural manifestations of slavery, abolition and emancipation from the eighteenth century to the present day, addressing such subjects and issues as: the relationship between Christian and Islamic forms of slavery and the polemical and scholarly debates these have occasioned; the visual representations of the moment of emancipation; the representation of slave rebellion; discourses of race and slavery; memory and slavery; and captivity and slavery. Among the writers and thinkers discussed are: Frantz Fanon, William Earle Jr, Olaudah Equiano, Charlotte Smith, Caryl Phillips, Bryan Edwards,Elizabeth Marsh, as well as a wide range of other thinkers, writers and artists. The volume also contains the hitherto unpublished text of an essay by the naturalist Henry Smeathman, Oeconomy of the Slave Ship.
Contributors: GEORGE BOULUKOS, DEIRDRE COLEMAN, MARAROULA JOANNOU, GERALD MACLEAN, FELICITY NUSSBAUM, DIANA PATON, SARA SALIH, LINCOLN SHLENSKY, MARCUS WOOD
Christopher Burlinson
Allegory, Space and the Material World in the Writings of Edmund Spenser
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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.
Jan Ross
The Works of Thomas Traherne IV
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Traherne's voice can be heard as never before. THE TABLET
Thomas Traherne (1637-1674), a clergyman of the Church of England during the Restoration, was little known until the early twentieth century, when his poetry and Centuries of Meditations were first printed. There have beensince only miscellaneous publications of his poetry and devotional writings fully edited, a gap which The Works of Thomas Traherne will remedy by bringing together Traherne's extant works, including his notebooks, in a definitive, printed edition for the first time. Volume IV makes available a single manuscript book held at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, never before published, the Church's Year-Book, Meditations and Devotions from the Resurrection to All Saints' Day, a work of celebration for the establishment and subsequent expansion of the universal Church and for the re-established Church of England. Also included is the anonymous devotional book that servedas the key to the initial identification of Traherne's manuscripts, A Serious and Pathetical Contemplation of the Mercies of GOD, in Several Most Devout and Sublime Thanksgivings for the Same, first printed in 1699 and commonly referred to as the "Thanksgivings". Both are works of universal appeal, learning and insight that show Traherne to be engaged in the central issues of his age and are essential reading for students not only of Traherne but also of seventeenth-century theological, liturgical and devotional literature. Printed in the Appendix is Meditations on the Six Days of the Creation, a work of questionable attribution to Traherne, as well as William T. Brooke's account of the discovery of Traherne's manuscripts, "The Story of the Traherne MSS. By their finder", held at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and published for the first time.
R.M. Thomson, Michael Gullick
A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts in Worcester Cathedral Library
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Collection of 277 litle-known medieval manuscripts, second only in number to Durham; special strengths are scholastic theology, biblical studies and sermons 13c-15c, and early music.
Worcester Cathedral Library contains 277 medieval manuscripts, the largest number of any English cathedral except Durham. Most of them belonged to the pre-Reformation Cathedral Priory and date between the eleventh and late fifteenth centuries. The collection has never been adequately catalogued before, and is consequently little known; much of the contents of the books, their physical features and history, is here described for the first time. The libraryis rich in late medieval theology and sermon-literature. Many of the books are important because of their connections with Oxford University, and constitute a valuable source for the history of studies there after c.1300. The Worcester monks tended to annotate and write their names in their books, and some seventy of them are identified. Great treasures are the Worcester Antiphoner, and the fragments of early polyphonic music, some newly-discovered and described for the first time. About half the books are in their medieval bindings, including the second-oldest intact Anglo-Saxon binding. These are described individually, and the history of binding at the Cathedral Priory traced, by Michael Gullick. The rest of the Introduction is devoted to the history of the books and library to the early 1600s. There are indexes of incipits and of manuscripts other than those catalogued, as well as a general index.R.M. THOMSON is Emeritus Professor of History, University of Tasmania; MICHAEL GULLICK..Other Cathedral library catalogues; Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Hereford Cathedral Library and Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Lincoln Cathedral Chapter Library.
Charity Scott-Stokes
Women's Books of Hours in Medieval England
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English translation of a variety of texts from women's books of hours, with introduction, notes, and an interpretive essay.
The book of hours is said to have been the most popular book owned by the laity in the later middle ages. Women were often patrons or owners of such books, which were usually illustrated: indeed, the earliest surviving exemplar made in England was designed and illustrated by William de Brailes in Oxford in the mid-thirteenth century, for an unknown young lady whom he portrayed in the book several times. This volume brings together a selection of texts taken from books of hours known to have been owned by women. While some will be familiar from bibles or prayer-books, others have to be sought in specialist publications, often embedded in other material, and a few have not until now been available at all in modern editions or translations. The texts are complemented by an introduction setting the book of hours in its context, an interpretive essay, glossary and annotated bibliography.
Sylvia Huot
Postcolonial Fictions in the Roman de Perceforest
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The Roman de Perceforestexplores issues of ethnic and cultural conflict and fusion, identity and hybridity in an imaginary pre-Arthurian Britain, ruled by a dynasty established by Alexander the Great.
The Roman de Perceforest was composed about 1340 for William I, Count of Hainaut. The vast romance, building on the prose romance cycles of the thirteenth century, chronicles an imaginary era of pre-Arthurian British history when Britain was ruled by a dynasty established by Alexander the Great. Its story of cultural rise, decline, and regeneration offers a fascinating exploration of medieval ideas about ethnic and cultural conflict and fusion, identity and hybridity. Drawing on the insights of contemporary postcolonial theory, Sylvia Huot examines the author's treatment of basic concepts such as "nature" and "culture", "savagery" and "civilisation". Particular attention isgiven to the text's treatment of gender and sexuality as focal points of cultural identity, to its construction of the ethnic categories of "Greek" and "Trojan", and to its exposition of the ideological biases inherent in any historical narrative. Written in the fourteenth century, revived at the fifteenth-century Burgundian court, and twice printed in sixteenth-century Paris, Perceforest is both a masterpiece of medieval literature and a vehicle for the transmission of medieval thought into the early modern era of global exploration and colonisation.
SYLVIA HUOT is Reader in Medieval French Literature and Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge.
Liz Herbert McAvoy
A Companion to Julian of Norwich
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One of the most important medieval writers studied in historical and literary context.
Julian of Norwich, the fourteenth/early fifteenth-century anchoress and mystic, is one of the most important and best-known figures of the Middle Ages. Her Revelations, intense visions of the divine, have been widely studied and read; the first known writings of an English woman, their influence extends over theology and literature. However, many aspects of both her life and thought remain enigmatic. This exciting collection offers a comprehensive, accessible coverage of the key aspects of debate surrounding Julian. It places the author within a wide range of contemporary literary, social, historical and religious contexts, and also provides a wealth of new insights into manuscript traditions, perspectives on her writing and ways of interpreting it, building on the work of many of the most active and influential researchers within Julian studies, and including the fruits of the most recent, ground-breaking findings. It will therefore be a vital companion for all of Julian's readers in the twenty-first century.
Dr LIZ HERBERT MCAVOY is Senior Lecturer in Gender in English and Medieval Studies at Swansea University.
CONTRIBUTORS: KIM M. PHILLIPS, CATE GUNN, ALEXANDRA BARRATT, DENISE M. BAKER, DIANE WATT, E.A. JONES, ANNIE SUTHERLAND, BARRY WINDEATT, MARLEEN CRE, ELISABETH DUTTON, ELIZABETH ROBERTSON, LAURA SAETVEIT MILES, LIZ HERBERT MCAVOY, ENA JENKINS, VINCENT GILLESPIE, SARAH SALIH
Kari Anne Rand Schmidt
The Index of Middle English Prose
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Fifty-five catalogued manuscripts include major religious works and medical writing - on uroscopy, surgery, bloodletting and pestilence.
Major religious works among the fifty-five manuscripts indexed in this handlist include a thirteenth-century copy of the Ancrene Riwle, Rolle's Forme of Living and the English translation of his Emendatio vitae, the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ, Mirk's Festial, the Pilgrimage of the Soul, the Seven Points of True Love and Everlasting Wisdom and the apparently unique English translation of the Wycliffite Rosarium theologie. Medical writing is also well represented, with a number of extensive compilations which also contain medical recipes. Uroscopy texts include the Practica urinarum and the shorter and the longer versionsof Henry Daniel's Liber uricrisiarum; other important medical texts are the first book of Guy de Chauliac's Chirurgia magna, the shorter English version of John of Burgundy's treatise on pestilence and two versionsof the bloodletting treatise attributed to Henry of Winchester. KARI ANNE RAND SCHMIDT is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Oslo.
Thomas G. Duncan
A Companion to the Middle English Lyric
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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.
Stewart Mottram
Empire and Nation in Early English Renaissance Literature
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Sensitive readings of Renaissance texts offer new insights into the perception of imperialism in the sixteenth century.
The complex topics of colonialism, empire and nation run throughout English Renaissance literature. Here, the author moves beyond recent work on England's "British" colonial interests, arguing for England's self-image in the sixteenth century as an "empire of itself", part of a culture which deliberately set itself apart from Britain and Europe. In the first section of the book he explores England's self-image as empire in the Arthurian and classical pageants of two Tudor royal entries into the City of London: Charles V's in 1522 and Anne Boleyn's in 1533. Part Two focuses on the culture of English Bible-reading and its influence on England's imperial self-image in the Tudor period. He offers fresh new readings of texts by Richard Morison, William Tyndale, John Bale, Nicholas Udall, and William Lightfoot, among other authors represented.
Dr STEWART MOTTRAM is Research Lecturer, Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Aberystwyth University.
David F. Johnson, Geert H.M. Claassens
Dutch Romances II
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First English translation of the Dutch version of the Old French Fergus, with accompanying text.
David F. Johnson is Professor of English, Florida State University; Geert H.M. Claassens is Professor of Middle Dutch Literature at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.
Norris J. Lacy
The Fortunes of King Arthur
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An examination of both the role played by Fortune in Arthurian literature and legend, and the fortunes of the legend itself.
The essays in this volume offer a general overview and a number of detailed examinations of Arthur's fortunes, in two senses. First is the role of Fortune itself, often personified and consistently instrumental, in accounts of Arthur's court and reign. More generally the articles trace the trajectory of the Arthurian legend - its birth, rise and decline - through the middle ages. The final essay follows the continued turning of Fortune's wheel, emphasizingthe modern revival and flourishing of the legend. The authors, all distinguished Arthurian scholars, illustrate their arguments through studies of early Latin and Welsh sources, chronicles, romances [in English, French, German, Italian, Latin and Welsh], manuscript illustration and modern literary texts.
Contributors: CHRISTOPHER A. SNYDER, SIAN ECHARD, EDWARD DONALD KENNEDY, W.R.J. BARRON, DENNIS H. GREEN, NORRIS LACY, CERIDWEN LLOYD-MORGAN, JOAN TASKER GRIMBERT, ALISON STONES, NEIL THOMAS, JANE H.M. TAYLOR, CAROLINE D. ECKHARDT, ALAN C LUPACK.
Hartmann von Aue, Cyril Edwards, Cyril Edwards
German Romance III: Iwein, or The Knight with the Lion
The late CYRIL EDWARDS was Senior Research Fellow of the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford.
Judith Weiss
Medieval Insular Romance: Translation and Innovation
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Major themes explored are narratives of the disguised prince, and the reinvention of stories for different tastes and periods.
These studies cover a wide chronological range and familiar and unfamiliar texts and topics. The disguised prince is a theme linking several articles, from early Anglo-Norman romances through later English ones, like King Edward and the Shepherd, to a late 16th-century recasting of the Havelok story as a Tudor celebration of Gloriana. 'Translation' in its widest sense, the way romance can reinvent stories for different tastes and periods, is anotherrunning theme; the opening introductory article considers the topic of translation theoretically, concerned to stimulate further research on how insular romances were transferred between vernaculars and literary systems, while other essays consider Lovelich's Merlin (a poem translating its Arthurian material to the poet's contemporary London milieu), Chaucer, and Breton lays in England. Contributors: JUDITH WEISS, IVANA DJORDJEVIC, ROSALIND FIELD, MORGAN DICKSON, ELIZABETH ARCHIBALD, AMANDA HOPKINS, ARLYN DIAMOND, PAUL PRICE, W.A. DAVENPORT, RACHEL SNELL, ROGER DALRYMPLE, HELEN COOPER. Selected studies, 'Romance in Medieval England' conference.
Karl Fugelso, Carol L. Robinson
Studies in Medievalism XVI
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Medievalism examined in a variety of genres, from fairy tales to today's computer games.
As medievalism is refracted through new media, it is often radically transformed. Yet it inevitably retains at least some common denominators with more traditional responses to the middle ages. This latest volume of Studies inMedievalism explores this phenomenon with a special section on computer games, examining digital echoes of the medieval past in subjects ranging from the sovereign ethics of empire in Star Wars to gender identity in on-line role playing. Medievalism in more conventional venues is also addressed, ranging from early French fairy tales to nineteenth-century neo-Byzantine murals. Great innovation and extraordinary continuity are thus juxtaposed not only within each article but also across the volume as a whole, in yet further testimony to the exceptional flexibility and enduring relevance of medievalism.
CONTRIBUTORS: ALICIA C. MONTOYA, ALBERT D. PIONKE, GRETCHENKREAHLING MCKAY, CHENE HEADY, BRUCE C. BRASINGTON, STEFANO MENGOZZI, CAROL L. ROBINSON, OLIVER M. TRAXEL, AMY S. KAUFMAN, BRENT MOBERLY, KEVIN MOBERLY, LAURYN S. MAYER
Margaret Connolly
The Index of Middle English Prose
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`The Index of Middle English Prose when completed will be a monumental achievement' REVIEW OF ENGLISH STUDIES
Cambridge University Library is one of Britain's major repositories of medieval manuscripts. Its two-letter collection (Dd-Oo) includes just over 1,000 medieval western manuscripts, and amongst these may be found examples of everytype of Middle English prose composition. Religious works predominate: there are several copies of the Wycliffite Bible, various sermon cycles, and works by Love, Hilton and Rolle; there is also a vast number of unattributed religious works. Secular texts are represented by the works of Chaucer, Mandeville's Travels, and no fewer than eight copies of the Brut. The collection is also extremely rich in Middle English prose writing in the fields of science and information, preserving medical, gynaecological, veterinary, culinary, alchemical, mathematical, heraldic and linguistic texts. Altogether the current handlist covers 207 manuscripts, and indexes more than 1250 separate items.
MARGARET CONNOLLY teaches in the School of English at the University of St Andrews.
Liz Herbert McAvoy
A Companion to Julian of Norwich
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One of the most important medieval writers studied in historical and literary context.
Julian of Norwich, the fourteenth/early fifteenth-century anchoress and mystic, is one of the most important and best-known figures of the Middle Ages. Her Revelations, intense visions of the divine, have been widely studied and read; the first known writings of an English woman, their influence extends over theology and literature. However, many aspects of both her life and thought remain enigmatic. This exciting new collection offers a comprehensive, accessible coverage of the key aspects of debate surrounding Julian. It places the author within a wide range of contemporary literary, social, historical and religious contexts, and also provides a wealth of new insightsinto manuscript traditions, perspectives on her writing and ways of interpreting it, building on the work of many of the most active and influential researchers within Julian studies, and including the fruits of the most recent,ground-breaking findings. It will therefore be a vital companion for all of Julian's readers in the twenty-first century.
Dr Liz Herbert McAvoy is Senior Lecturer in Gender in English and Medieval Studies at Swansea University.
A survey of Restoration poetry, from the forms in which it was disseminated to studies of important texts.
This book explores the complex ways in which authors, publishers, and readers contributed to the making of Restoration poetry. The essays in Part I map some principal aspects of Restoration poetic culture: how poetic canons were established through both print and manuscript; how censorship operated within the manuscript transmission of erotic and politically sensitive poems; the poetic functions of authorial anonymity; the work of allusion and intertextualreference; the translation and adaptation of classical poetry; and the poetic representations of Charles II. Part II turns to individual poets, and charts the making of Dryden's canon; the ways in which Mac Flecknoe operates through intertextual allusions; the relationship of the variant texts of Marvell's "To his Coy Mistress"; and the treatment of Rochester's canon and text by his modern editors. The discussions are complemented by illustrationsdrawn from both printed books and manuscripts.
PAUL HAMMOND is Professor of Seventeenth-Century Literature at the University of Leeds.
Valerie Edden
The Index of Middle English Prose
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`The Index of Middle English Prose when completed will be a monumental achievement.' REVIEW OF ENGLISH STUDIES
This handlist indexes 82 manuscripts from twelve Midlands collections. The collections examined are diverse in origin: the cathedral libraries include Hereford and Worcester, whose collections include manuscripts in their possession continuously since the middle ages, and Gloucester, Lichfield, Peterborough and Southwell Minster, whose early libraries were largely dispersed at the dissolution or during the Civil War and whose present libraries are modern foundations. Also included are manuscripts on deposit in Record Offices in Gloucester and Leicester, the private collections on deposit in Nottingham University Library and manuscripts acquired by university or college libraries inthe twentieth century. Of note are several Wycliffite bibles, a number of sermon collections (including one not previously described), several works by Rolle, Hilton's Scale of Perfection, Chaucer's prose tales and the chronicle Brut.Dr VALERIE EDDEN is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English,University of Birmingham.
Irma Taavitseinen
The Index of Middle English Prose, Handlist X
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Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.
John McKinnell
Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend
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Close examination of the significant theme of other-worldly encounters in Norse myth and legend, including giantesses, monsters and the Dead.
A particular, recurring feature of Old Norse myths and legends is an encounter between creatures of This World [gods and human beings] and those of the Other [giants, giantesses, dwarves, prophetesses, monsters and the dead]. Concentrating on cross-gendered encounters, this book analyses these meetings, and the different motifs and situations they encompass, from the consultation of a prophetess by a king or god, to sexual liaisons and return from the dead. It considers the evidence for their pre-Christian origins, discusses how far individual poets and prose writers were free to modify them, and suggests that they survived in medieval Christian society because [like folk-tale] they provide a non-dogmatic way of resolving social and psychological problems connected with growing up, succession from one generation to the next, sexual relationships and bereavement.
Laura F. Hodges
Chaucer and Costume
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Literary analysis of the meanings inherent in the costumes of Chaucer's secular pilgrims, and his methods of characterisation through costume.
Clothing and accessories in the middle ages functioned socially as status symbols, counted economically as portable wealth, and signified metaphorically the wearer's spiritual condition. Chaucer's costume descriptions suggest allof these connotations and more. This book presents the first sustained literary analysis of the meanings inherent in the costumes of Chaucer's secular pilgrims, illuminating the extent of their (non)conformity in their dress to fourteenth-century occupational, socio-political, and religious norms. The author discusses the significance of individual fabrics, dyes, accessories, garments, and assembled costumes, and explains technical details and specialist vocabularies for cloth-making, clothing, accessories and armor, drawing on a wealth of contemporary evidence including wills, household inventories, wardrobe accounts, manuscript illuminations and church decoration.
LAURA F. HODGES has a doctorate from Rice University in medieval literature and an undergraduate degree in clothing and textiles from Auburn University; she has taught English literature for many years. As an independent scholar, she specialises in the semiotics of textiles and costume in literature.
Ann F. Howey, Stephen R. Reimer
A Bibliography of Modern Arthuriana (1500-2000)
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Annotated bibliography of the Arthurian legend in modern English-language fiction, not only in literary texts, but in television, music, and art.
The legend of Arthur has been a source of fascination for writers and artists in English since the fifteenth century, when Thomas Malory drew together for the first time in English a variety of Arthurian stories from a number of sources to form the Morte Darthur. It increased in popularity during the Victorian era, when after Tennyson's treatment of the legend, not only authors and dramatists, but painters, musicians, and film-makers found a sourceof inspiration in the Arthurian material. This interdisciplinary, annotated bibliography lists the Arthurian legend in modern English-language fiction, from 1500 to 2000, including literary texts, film, television, music, visual art, and games. It will prove an invaluable source of reference for students of literary and visual arts, general readers, collectors, librarians, and cultural historians--indeed, by anyone interested in the history of the waysin which Camelot has figured in post-medieval English-speaking cultures.
ANN F. HOWEY is Assistant Professor at Brock University, Canada; STEPHEN R. REIMER is Associate Professor at the University of Alberta, Canada
Jan Ross
The Works of Thomas Traherne II
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Traherne's voice can be heard as never before. THE TABLET
Thomas Traherne [1637? - 1674], a clergyman of the Church of England during the Restoration, was little known until the early twentieth century, when his poetry and Centuries of Meditations were discovered. There have beensince miscellaneous publications of his poetry and devotional writings. The Works of Thomas Traherne brings together all of Traherne's extant works in a definitive, printed edition for the first time. It will include both his published and unpublished works, and his notebooks, presenting them insofar as possible by manuscript, giving due attention to their physical aspects and to their integrity as manuscript books. Volumes II and III make available the Commentaries of Heaven, preserved in one manuscript held at the British Library. Organised topically, it was intended to cover the whole of the alphabet but extends only through `A' and part of `B', with 95prose articles altogether. It possesses the characteristics of a commonplace book, encyclopaedia and dictionary, and contains poetry, meditations, philosophical discourse, and polemic. The unusual range of subjects treated, from `Abhorrence' to `Ant', `Aristotle' to `Atom', shows Traherne to be an imaginative and compelling writer in his approach to Christian theology, while maintaining both his integrity and orthodoxy as a priest.
Graham D. Caie
The Old English Poem Judgement Day II
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Judgement Day II presented in its manuscript context, with discussion of function of penitential verse.
Critical editions of the Old English poem Judgement Day II, its Latin source, Bede's poem De die iudicii, and the homily in Oxford, Bodleian, Hatton 113, which is based on the vernacular poem, are offered in this volume: Judgement Day IIis thus presented in its manuscript context, highlighting its links with the poems found there, and casting new light on its interpretation. The editions are accompanied with translations, a commentaryon points of linguistic and literary interest, and a glossary. The introduction includes detailed descriptions of the manuscripts in which the works appear; the function of the poems as penitential verse; and a discussion ofeschatological thought in the the early middle ages, especially with regard to Bede. There are also sections on the language, style and metre of the Old English poem, and a full literary analysis.
Professor GRAHAM D. CAIEis Head of the School of English and Scottish Language and Literature at the University of Glasgow.
Tom Shippey, Martin Arnold
Studies in Medievalism XIV
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Articles centred on the use made by European nations of medieval texts and other artefacts to define their history and origins.
The 19th century was a time of fierce national competition for the "ownership" of medieval documents and the legitimation of national histories. This volume contains papers dealing with the attempts of French scholars to claim English documents (and vice versa), as also of disputes between Scandinavian and British scholars, and Dutch, German and Italian scholars. Regionalism is also a repeated topic, with claims made for the autonomy of Frisia within the Netherlands, and Languedoc within France. Other papers deal with the rediscovery of medieval music, with early American attempts to redirect the course of 20th century poetry by appeal to medieval precedent, and with the continuing vitality of Dante's Divina Commedia (especially the Inferno) in the light of 20th century experience. The volume as a whole sheds new light on the whole process of appropriating history, which remains a vital and contentioustopic, both inside and outside the academic world.
CONTRIBUTORS: MARK BURDE, MAGNUS FJALLDAL, ALPITA DE JONG, ANNETTE KREUZIGER-HERR, NILS HOLGER PETERSEN, RACHEL DRESSLER, KARL FUGELS, WILLIAM QUINN, PETER CHRISTENSEN
Neil Cartlidge
Boundaries in Medieval Romance
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A wide-ranging collection on one of the most interesting features of medieval romance.
Medieval romance frequently, and perhaps characteristically, capitalises on the dramatic and suggestive possibilities implicit in boundaries - not only the geographical, political and cultural frontiers that medieval romances imagine and imply, but also more metaphorical demarcations. It is these boundaries, as they appear in insular romances circulating in English and French, which the essays in this volume address. They include the boundary between reality and fictionality; boundaries between different literary traditions, modes and cultures; and boundaries between different kinds of experience or perception, especially the "altered states" associated with sickness, magic, the supernatural, or the divine.
CONTRIBUTORS: HELEN COOPER, ROSALIND FIELD, MARIANNE AILES, PHILLIPA HARDMAN, ELIZABETH BERLINGS, SIMON MEECHAM-JONES, ELIZABETH WILLIAMS, ARLYN DIAMOND, ROBERT ROUSE, LAURA ASHE, JUDITH WEISS, IVANA DJORDJEVIC, CORINNE SAUNDERS
John B. Marino
The Grail Legend in Modern Literature
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The Grail legends have in modern times been appropriated by a number of different scholarly schools of thought; their approaches are analysed here.
This study shows how modern (including postmodern) adaptations of the Grail legend correspond to trends in the scholarly community and how the legend has been appropriated by competing world-views. There are three parallel trendsin Grail scholarship and modern adaptations of the legend: controversy over Christian or pagan origins, secularization by way of humanism, and esoteric mysticism. These three trends reflect movements in popular culture. Relativismand multiculturalism influence Christian--pagan cultural conflict in the adaptations. Mythographers maintain the legend's appeal in a humanist culture by considering the Grail metaphor rather than material actuality; modern adaptations then transform the Grail from a particularly Christian symbol to one with universal application in an increasingly secular society. Modern esoteric spiritualities allow the Grail actuality with flexible meaning. This study,then, demonstrates how the Grail legend is transformed and adapted from medieval to modern cultures and continues to evolve today. JOHN B. MARINO is adjunct instructor, Maryville University and Saint Louis University.
Thomas Hahn
Robin Hood in Popular Culture
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Studies of varied aspects of Robin Hood legends and associated topics: the greenwood, archery, outlawry, and 20c response to the legends.
The Robin Hood tradition has had a continuing appeal from the middle ages to the present day, the hero himself holding a distinctive place within popular culture, his exploits, and those of his companions, being celebrated in multiple forms, from the earliest rituals, plays and ballads to musical theatre, lyric poetry, modern popular fiction, cinema and TV. The essays in this volume provide a rich and coherent perspective on this enigmatic figure and the legends which have grown up around him, offering a wide range of approaches. Topics include place-name study; examinations of surviving manuscripts and their cultural context; appraisals of the links between Robin Hood and medievalarchery; other medieval outlaws; mythic figures such as the Green Man; patterns of masculine and feminine identity; and the popularity of Robin Hood on stage and screen, in comic books and videos, and in modern Japan. There are also extended overviews of the hero's origins and status; and the future of Robin Hood studies.
Professor THOMAS HAHN teaches in the Department of English at the University of Rochester, New York.
Contributors:THOMAS HAHN, FRANK ABBOTT, SARAH BEACH, LAURA BLUNK, KELLY DEVRIES, R.B. DOBSON, MICHAEL EATON, KEVIN J. HARTY, STUART KANE, STEPHEN KNIGHT, DAVID LAMPE, GARY YERSHON
L.M. Eldredge
The Index of Middle English Prose, Handlist IX
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A catalogue of Middle English texts, largely relating to heraldry and the sciences of the time.
More than 700 manuscripts reflect Ashmole's life-long passions: heraldryand the sciences of his day: astrology, alchemy, geomancy, medicine;well over 100 contain items in Middle English. There are manuscriptsof great interest, such as the Ashmole Bestiary, but the importantitems in Middle English are no less noteworthy. Here we find the uniquecopy of an English translation of Bernard of Gordon's Lilium medicinae; a codex, Ashmole 59, entirely in thehand of John Shirley; a Wycliffite Bible and a copy of the Pore Caytif. Along with many anonymous pieces of popular astrology, there is an English translation of John Ashenden's Introductory, several copies of Johnof Burgundy's plague tract, and an elegant copy of Henry Daniel's Liber uricrisiae. There are also two copies of The Brut, and anthology manuscripts collecting vast arrays of herbal medicine, astrological techniquesand alchemical procedures. L.M. ELDREDGE was formerly Professor in the Department of Englishat the University of Ottawa.
Catherine A.M. Clarke
Literary Landscapes and the Idea of England, 700-1400
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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.
Emma Parker
Contemporary British Women Writers
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Essays illustrating the range and diversity of post-1970 British women writers.
Despite the enduring popularity of contemporary women's writing, British women writers have received scant critical attention. They tend to be overshadowed by their American counterparts in the media and have come to be represented within the academy almost exclusively by Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson. This collection celebrates the range and diversity of contemporary (post-1970) British women writers. It challenges misconceptions about the natureand scope of fiction by women writers working in Britain - commonly dismissed as parochial, insular, dreary and domestic - and seeks to expand conventional definitions of "British" by exploring how issues of nationality intersectwith gender, class, race and sexuality. Writers covered include Pat Barker, A.L. Kennedy, Maggie Gee, Rukhsana Ahmad, Joan Riley, Jennifer Johnston, Ellen Galford, Susan Hill, Fay Weldon, Emma Tennant, and Helen Fielding.
Contributors: DAVID ELLIS, CLARE HANSON, MAROULA JOANNOU, PAULINA PALMER, EMMA PARKER, FELICITY ROSSLYN, CHRISTIANE SCHLOTE, JOHN SEARS, ELUNED SUMMERS-BREMNER, IMELDA WHELEHAN, GINA WISKER.
David Aers
Medieval Literature and Historical Inquiry
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Historicist readings of the politics and ethics exhibited in a range of medieval texts including Chaucer, Malory and the York Corpus Christi plays.
Critical historicist readings engage with the politics and ethics of selected medieval texts, addressing a wide range of literature and topics of enquiry: Langland, Chaucer, and the Pearl-poet, Malory and the York Corpus Christi plays; chivalric cultures, their forms of identity and mourning; and the politics, ethics and theology of some of the most fascinating writing in late medieval England. Intended as a tribute to Professor Derek Pearsall, andreflecting his major contribution to medieval literary criticism, they are an important addition to the critical and historical study of the period.DAVID AERS is James B. Duke Professor of English and Professor of Historical Theology at Duke University.
William E. Fredeman
The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti 7
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A period in Rossetti's life characterized by breakdown, disappointment, ill health and mounting problems with creditors and patrons.
The period from 1875-77 covers the greater part of what Rossetti's brother William later characterized as "the chloralized years" when the amounts he took, usually accompanied by alcohol, eventually led to another breakdown and even alienated his old friend Ford Madox Brown for a time. In his mounting troubles with creditors, patrons, and various legal matters he depended more and more on Theodore Watts-Dunton. The sojourn at Aldwick Lodge, Bognor, from the fall of 1875 to July 1876, was marked by Rossetti's ever-deepening depression. The artist, who had perhaps hoped for another idyllic period with Janey Morris and her daughters in residence modelling for his paintings, musthave been bitterly disappointed. Fearing imminent death, he directed George Hake to make new provisions in his will, emphasizing the importance of burning all Janey's letters to him. Despite his physical condition, he nevertheless completed or began such major works as La Bella Mano, Astarte Syriaca, The Sea-Spell, The Blessed Damozel, and Mnemosyne amongst others, as well as a number of portraits. He also worked with Frederic Shields on his engraving project, and acquired a new patron in William A. Turner.
Wolfram's Parzival continues to inspire and influence, in modern times works as diverse as Wagner's Parsifal and Lohengrin, Franz Kafka's The Castle, Terry Gilliam's film The Fisher King, and Umberto Eco's Baudolino.
Vast in its scope, incomparably dense in its imagery, Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival ranks alongside Dante's Divine Comedy as one of the foremost narrative works to emerge from medieval Europe. This book is a newtranslation of Parzival, together with the fragments of the Titurel, an elegiac offshoot of Parzival, and the nine love-songs attributed to Wolfram. Parzival is the greatest of the medieval Grail romances. In its depth and complexity of characterisation this work of the early thirteenth century anticipates the modern novel. It encompasses deeds of chivalry, tournaments and sieges, courtly love, and other erotic undertakings, but also sin and penance, and a deeply moving study in depression. Centre stage are the Grail Castle and Arthur's Round Table, but the pagan world of the Orient also is also reflected. Parzival has inspired and influenced works as diverse as Wagner's Parsifal and Lohengrin, Franz Kafka's The Castle, Terry Gilliam's film The Fisher King, and Umberto Eco's Baudolino. Cyril Edwards' thoughtful translation vividlyconveys the power of this complex, wide-ranging medieval masterpiece.
CYRIL EDWARDS is a lecturer in German at St Peter's College and Research Fellow of the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford. He is the author of The Beginnings of German Literature (Camden House, 2002), and numerous articles on the medieval lyric and Old High German. His previous translations include Hans Sachs's "Song of the Nose" for the King's Singers, Bernhard Maier's Dictionary of Celtic Religion and Culture (Boydell & Brewer, 1997) and The Medieval Housebook (Prestel-Verlag, 1997).
Sarah-Grace Heller
Fashion in Medieval France
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Twelfth- and thirteenth-century medieval French texts reveal the presence of a developed fashion system long before the previously accepted birth of Western fashion in the mid-fourteenth century.
How are we to distinguish between a culture organized around fashion, and one where the desire for novel adornment is latent, intermittent, or prohibited? How do fashion systems organize social hierarchies, individual psychology,creativity, and production? Medieval French culture offers a case study of "systematic fashion", demonstrating desire for novelty, rejection of the old in favor of the new, and criticism of outrageous display. Texts from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries describe how cleverly-cut garments or unique possessions make a character distinctive, and even offer advice on how to look attractive on a budget or gain enough spending money to shop for oneself. Suchdescriptions suggest fashion's presence, yet accepted notions date the birth of Western fashion to the mid-fourteenth-century revolution in men's clothing styles. A fashion system must have been present prior to this 'revolution'in styles to facilitate such changes, and abundant evidence for the existence of such a system is cogently set out in this study. Ultimately, fashion is a conceptual system expressed by words evaluating a style's ephemeral worth,and changes in visual details are symptomatic, rather than determinative.
SARAH-GRACE HELLER is an associate professor in Medieval French at Ohio State University.
Margret Berger
Hildegard of Bingen: On Natural Philosophy and Medicine
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Medieval attitudes to health and treatment revealed in Hildegard's treatise.
Hildegard of Bingen [1098-1179], an important figure in her own time, has come increasingly to critical attention in recent years. Cause et Cure, attributed to Hildegard, is both a cosmological text and a medical handbook;it is a densely layered work woven together from diverse threads. It begins with a chapter on cosmology which leads to consideration of the human being as a small-scale copy of the universe. From here the focus shifts to the diseases and disorders which afflict human beings. The sections on treatment which follow provide information on medieval pharmacology and herbal healing. The text discusses the differences between male and female, human sexuality, embryology, sleep and dreams, signs predicting death or survival, astrological influences. The Introduction sketches Hildegard's life and career, and describes the cultural context with emphasis on medieval medicine. The Interpretive Essay discusses the selections presented in translation and alerts the reader to the benefits as well as the limits of medieval health care.
MARGRET BERGER, formerly Associate Professor in the Division of Interdisciplinary Studies [German] at Simon Fraser University, has specialised in medieval German literature and Romance philology.
Jan Ross
The Works of Thomas Traherne I
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First volume in what will be the definitive edition of the complete works of Thomas Traherne, containing previously unpublished material.
Thomas Traherne [1637?-1674], a clergyman of the Church of England during the Restoration, was little known until the early twentieth century, when his poetry and Centuries of Meditations were discovered. Although his reputation as a metaphysical poet in the tradition of Donne and Herbert has grown since then, there have only been miscellaneous publications of his poetry and devotional writings, with much of his output still unpublished. TheWorks of Thomas Traherne brings together all of Traherne's extant works in a definitive, printed edition for the first time, with the purpose of giving a sense of the manuscript or printed originals. His works not published in print will be edited by manuscript insofar as possible, giving due attention to their physical aspects and to their integrity as manuscript books. The text of Traherne's works will be printed in seven volumes, with an eighth volume of commentary, and a further volume of his notebooks. This first volume makes available in print four treatises contained in a single manuscript recently discovered in 1997 at Lambeth Palace Library. While they bear thestamp of Traherne's unique character of thought and writing, they are diverse in subject and form. Traherne wrote against a background of scepticism as well as a growing atheism. These four works show him to be profoundly aware ofthe currents of his age, theological, political, sociological and scientific, to which he responded with thoughtful and imaginative insights. They show him also to be a compelling apologist for the Christian religion and for thegoodness of the church. This much needed and important edition of the works of Thomas Traherne makes a valuable contribution not only to Traherne studies but also to seventeenth-century studies in general.
R. M. Thomson
A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts of Pembroke College, Cambridge
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The collection of medieval manuscripts at Pembroke College is an important one. Its most striking feature is that the majority of MSS 1-120 came from the abbey of Bury St Edmunds, as the gift of Thomas Smart in 1599.
The collection of medieval manuscripts at Pembroke College is an important one. Its most striking feature is that the majority of MSS 1-120 came from the abbey of Bury St Edmunds, as the gift of Thomas Smart in 1599. Included among them is the famous 'Bury Gospels' (MS 120). It is one of the largest groups of monastic manuscripts to survive as an ensemble. The rest are, for the most part, the remains of the College's own medieval library, and have been little studied. In addition there are some twenty post-medieval acquisitions, including two splendid Anglo-Saxon Gospel Books. The main part of this catalogue contains individual, detailed descriptions of some 300 MSS and several hundred binding fragments. The descriptions are preceded by an Introduction outlining the history of the collection, and are accompanied by 130 colour plates. The collection was last catalogued by M. R. James in 1911, and over a century later, this publication both updates his account, and brings to bear modern techniques of manuscript study.
Because of the Covid pandemic, the final check on MSS 235-327 was carried out after this book had been printed, and considerable additional details were discovered. This is available as a supplement to the Catalogue, which can be downloaded from the website of Pembroke College Library: https://www.pem.cam.ac.uk/college/library/manuscript-catalogue-supplement.
Nigel Bryant
The High Book of the Grail
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Vivid translation of one of the earliest and most important Grail romances.
NIGEL BRYANT's previous Arthurian books include The Legend of the Grail, Chretien de Troyes' Perceval and its Continuations, and Robert de Boron's Merlin and the Grail.
Keith Busby, Roger Dalrymple
Arthurian Literature XXIII
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The most recent research in matters Arthurian, by leading scholars in the field.
The essays in this latest volume have a particularly strong focus on English material; they include explorations of Malory's presentation of Sir Dinadan, the connections between ballads and popular romance, and, moving beyond themedieval period, Thomas Love Peacock's The Misfortunes of Elphin. They are complemented by articles on French sources [L'Atre perilleux, the Queste del Saint Graal, and the Perlesvaus], and with an overview of the idea of cowardice and Arthurian narrative.Contributors: ANDREW LYNCH, P. J. C. FIELD, JOYCE COLEMAN, D. THOMAS HANKS JR, RALUCA L. RADULESCU, MARGARET ROBSON, MARTIN CONNOLLY, NORRIS J. LACY, FANNI BOGDANOW, TONY GRAND, ROBERT GOSSEDGE
Piero Boitani
The Body and the Soul in Medieval Literature
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The theme of the `body and soul' relationship in medieval texts and modern reworkings.
The theme of the body-and-soul relationship in medieval texts and in modern reworkings of medieval matter is explored in the articles here, specifically the representation of the body in romance; the relevance of bawdy tales to the cultural experience of authors and readers in the middle ages; the function of despair, or melancholy, in medieval and Renaissance literature; and the political significance of late medieval representations of `bodies' in the chroniclers' accounts of the Rising and in Gower's poems. Two articles are devoted to modern retellings of medieval themes: John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, seen in relation to the traditional acta martyrum, and the medieval revival in Tory Britain exemplified in Douglas Oliver's The Infant and the Pearl. Contributors: PAMELA JOSEPH BENSON, NIGEL S. THOMPSON, JON WHITMAN, JEROME MANDEL, BARBARA NOLAN, YASUNARI TAKADA, YVETTE MARCHAND, ROBERT F. YEAGER, JOERG O. FICHTE, JOHN KERRIGAN
Katie Normington
Gender and Medieval Drama
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An investigation of the public image of women as presented in contemporary drama.
The focus of this study is upon the Corpus Christi plays, supplemented by other performance practices such as festive and social entertainments, civic parades, funeral processions and public punishments. The main argument relatesto the traditional approaches to women's non-performance in the Corpus Christi dramas, but other factors are considered and analysed, including the semiotics of the cross-dressed actor and the significance of the visual and spatial language of the processional stage to gender debates. In conclusion, there is a series of readings which reassess the dramatic portrayal of a selection of holy and vulgar women - the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, Mrs Noah and Dame Procula. The emphasis throughout the book is upon a performance-based analysis. Evidence from Records of Early English Drama, social, literary and cultural sources are drawn together in order to investigate how performances within the late Middle Ages were both shaped by, and shaped, the public image of women.
KATIE NORMINGTON is Lecturer in Drama, Royal Holloway, London.
William E. Fredeman
The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Major edition revealing key ideas and events in the lives and work of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood and Victorian literary circles: 5,800 letters (including 2,000 previously unpublished letters) to 330 recipients.
The best of these letters, flowing rapidly from his pen, radiate charisma and enthusiasm, warmth and care for his friends, and a total engagement with art and literature. BURLINGTON MAGAZINE [Julian Treuherz] 1835-1854: This nine-volume edition will represent the definitive collection of extant Rossetti correspondence, an outstanding primary witness to the range of ideas and opinions that shaped Rossetti's art and poetry. The largest collection ofRossetti's letters ever to be published, it features all known surviving letters, a total of almost 5,800 to over 330 recipients, and includes 2,000 previously unpublished letters by Rossetti and selected letters to him. In addition to this, about 100 drawings taken from within letter texts are also reproduced. In its entirety the collection will give an invaluable and unparalleled insight into Rossetti's character and art, and will form a rich resource for students and scholars studying all aspects of his life and work. The correspondence has been transcribed from collections in sixty-four manuscript repositories, containing Rossetti's letters to his companions in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Hunt and Stephens; friends such as Boyce and Bell Scott; his early patrons, Ellen Heaton and James Leathart; and his publisher friend, Alexander Macmillan. An additional twenty-two printed sources have also been accessed. Index; extensive annotations.WILLIAM E. FREDEMAN (1928-1999) was professor of English at the University of British Columbia from 1956-1991. His many books, articles and reviews on the Pre-Raphaelites and their followersinclude his important Pre-Raphaelitism: A Bibliocritical Study. He died in 1999 with this edition almost completed. An editorial committee chaired by Betty Fredeman has been formed to see it through the press.
James P Carley
Arthurian Literature XV
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`[The series is an indispensable component of any historical or Arthurian library.'NOTES AND QUERIES
An examination of the importance of knightly combat in Malory's Morte Darthur.
This study of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur centres on its main narrative interest and expressive medium, armed combat. In the analysis of the discourse of fighting, some repeated descriptive preoccupations -to do with name, vision, blood, emotion and gesture - are examined as "needs of meaning" with relevance for the whole text, and related to political, religious, genealogical, sexual and medical views of Malory's period. Andrew Lynch's exploration of the power of "name" as public reputation in the Morte challenges the usual reading of Malory's adventures, and he goes on to survey Malory reception and the attempts of earlier critics to moralise the fights in terms he sees as inappropriate. His discussion of the narrative vision and thematics of combat covers the whole text, but places special emphasis on the stories of knight-errantry, and particularly the often neglected Book of Sir Tristram.
ANDREW LYNCH is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Western Australia.
Michael Resler, Michael Resler
German Romance I
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Edition and translation of the first freely invented German Arthurian romance.
Part of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Collaborative Series, which now includes editions of the main texts through from A to F.
This volume offers a new edition of the E-text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, commonly known as the Peterborough Chronicle. The E-text is of enormous importance in Chronicle studies: in its early part it is the best representativeof the Northern Recension of the Chronicle; in continuing up to the second half of the twelfth century, its span is by far the longest of all the versions. Even more than other versions of the Chronicle, it reflects transitions ofvital interest to historians, linguists, and literary scholars. The E-text has not been edited in its entirety, except as a facsimile, for over a century. This semi-diplomatic edition offers a readable text with modern punctuation and capitalization. The interpolated material relating to Peterborough is clearly distinguished from the rest of the text. Indices of personal names, people-names, and place-names follow the text itself. The Introduction includes an account of the manuscript and a linguistic analysis of the E-text. The E-text cannot of course be studied in isolation. This volume is part of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Collaborative Series and with its publicationthe Series now includes editions of the main texts through from A to F. A substantial section of the Introduction to the volume is devoted to a detailed discussion of E's complex textual relationships with the other versions of the Chronicle, and also with other relevant documents such as Peterborough Charters and twelfth-century Latin chronicles.
Dr SUSAN IRVINE is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English, University College, London.
Charity Scott-Stokes
Women's Books of Hours in Medieval England
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English translation of a variety of texts from women's books of hours, with introduction, notes, and an interpretive essay.
The book of hours is said to have been the most popular book owned by the laity in the later Middle Ages. This volume brings together a selection of texts taken from books of hours known to have been owned by women. While some will be familiar from bibles or prayer-books, others have to be sought in specialist publications, often embedded in other material, and a few have not until now been available at all in modern editions or translations. The texts arecomplemented by an introduction setting the book of hours in its context, an interpretive essay, glossary and annotated bibliography.
Raluca L. Radulescu
The Gentry Context for Malory's Morte Darthur
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Morte Darthur is investigated for its reflection of the contemporary political concerns Malory shared with the gentry class for whom he wrote.
This book sets Malory's Morte Darthur in the context of the political concerns that he shared with the fifteenth-century gentry readers for whom he wrote his book; the author draws widely on their correspondence and readingmaterial, but looks particularly at the political content of contemporary miscellanies owned, commissioned and read by the gentry. She shows how the themes of political governance and royal succession, which are of primary importance in contemporary historical chronicles and genealogies, informed the political thinking of Malory's readers; and demonstrates how debates over ideas of worship, fellowship, lordship, and counselling indicate a process of changes in the gentry's political attitudes and values, their sense of identity, and also their response to the Arthurian story.
Dr RALUCA L. RADULESCU is Lecturer in English at Bangor University.
Anne Laskaya
Chaucer's Approach to Gender in the Canterbury Tales
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An original feminist approach, through a study of Chaucer's treatment of masculinity, to the Canterbury Tales
This volume presents a feminist approach to the Canterbury Tales, investigating the ways in which the tensions and contradictions found within the broad contours of medieval gender discourse write themselves into Chaucer'stext. Four discourses of medieval masculinity are examined, which simultaneously reinforce and resist one another: heroic or chivalric, Christian, courtly love, and emerging humanist models. Each chapter attempts to negotiateboth contemporary assumptions of gender construction, and essentialist readings of gender common to the middle ages; throughout, the author argues that the Canterbury Tales offer a sophisticated discussion of masculinity,and that it strongly indicts some of the prevalent medieval notions of ideal masculinity while still remaining firmly homosocial and homophobic. The book concludes that on the question of gender issues, the Tales are beststudied as male-authored texts containing representations and negotiations revealing much about late medieval masculinities.
Dr ANNE LASKAYA teaches in the English Department at the University of Oregon.
Priscilla Bawcutt, Janet Hadley Williams
A Companion to Medieval Scottish Poetry
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A full survey and overview of the extraordinary flowering of Scottish poetry in the middle ages.
The poetry written in Scotland between the late fourteenth and the early years of the sixteenth century is exceptionally rich and varied. The contributions collected here, by leading specialists in the field, provide a comprehensive and up-to-date guide to the material. There are introductions to the literary culture of late medieval Scotland and its historical context; separate studies of the writings of James I, Robert Henryson, William Dunbar, Gavin Douglas, and Sir David Lyndsay; and essays devoted to general themes or genres, including the historiographical tradition, religious verse, romances, and the legendary history of Alexander the Great. A final chapter provides bibliographical guidance on the major advances in the criticism and scholarly study of this poetry during the last thirty years.
Contributors: PRISCILLA BAWCUTT, JULIA BOFFEY, JOHN BURROW, ELIZABETH EWAN, R. JAMES GOLDSTEIN, DOUGLAS GRAY, JANET HADLEY WILLIAMS, R. J. LYALL, ANNE MCKIMM, JOANNA MARTIN, RHIANNON PURDIE, NICOLA ROYAN.
Alex Davis
Chivalry and Romance in the English Renaissance
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A reinterpretation of the place and significance of chivalric culture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and what it says about contemporary attitudes to the medieval.
Chivalry and Romance in Renaissance England offers a reinterpretation of the place and significance of chivalric culture in the sixteenth and seventeenth-century and explores the implications of this reconfigured interpretation for an understanding of the medieval generally. Received wisdom has it that both chivalric culture and the literature of chivalry - romances - were obsolete by the time of the Renaissance, an understanding epitomised by the figure of Don Quixote, the reader of chivalric fictions whose risible literary tastes render him absurd. By way of contrast, this study finds evidence for the continued vitality and relevance of chivalric values at all levels of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century society, from the court entertainments of Elizabeth I to the civic culture of London merchants and artisans. At the same time, it charts the process by which, throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the chivalric has been firstly exclusively identified with the medieval and then transformed into a virtual shorthand for 'pastness' generally.
ALEX DAVIS is lecturer in English, University of St Andrews.
Sarah Larratt Keefer
New Approaches to Editing Old English Verse
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Seven original essays on the theory, practice and future of editing Old English verse.
Questions of the theory, practice and future of editing Old English verse have become increasingly pressing in the light of new research and technology, and this volume of seven original substantial essays explores a number of important editorial issues. The collection investigates the implications of current concerns in textual editing relating to the presentation of Old English verse, among them materialist criticism and approaches to the culture of thebook in the early middle ages; revisionist readings of the canons and heritage of nineteenth-century philology; and the electronic future of editing Old English. Particular topics addressed include the ethics of editing and its responsibility to both poet and reader; the neglected verses of the Paris Psalter; the editorial problems presented by the mixed form of Ælfric's rhythmical prose; and the difficulties of the printed page. The final essay in the volume explores the capabilities of the electronic hypertext to reinvent the whole process of editing and editions.
KATHERINE O'BRIEN O'KEEFFE is Professor of English and Fellow of the Medieval Institute, University of Notre Dame; Dr SARAH LARRATT KEEFER teaches in the Department of English at Trent University.
Contributors: EDWARD B. IRVING, JR, SARAH LARRATT KEEFER, A.N. DOANE, D.G. SCRAGG, M.J. TOSWELL, PAUL E. SZARMACH, PATRICK W. CONNER
Thomas G. Duncan
A Companion to the Middle English Lyric
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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
Tom Shippey, Martin Arnold
Studies in Medievalism XII
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Essays on the continuing power and applicability of medieval images, with particular reference to recent films.
Contributors: BRUCE BRASINGTON, WILLIAM CALIN, CARL HAMMER, JONA HAMMER, PAUL HARDWICK, NICKOLAS HAYDOCK, GWENDOLYN MORGAN, JOANNE PARKER, CLARE A. SIMMONS, WILLIAM F. WOODS.
Professor TOM SHIPPEY teaches in the Department of English at the University of St Louis; Dr MARTIN ARNOLD teaches at University College, Scarborough.
Carol F. Heffernan
The Orient in Chaucer and Medieval Romance
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A study of romance and the Orient in Chaucer and in anonymous popular metrical romances.
The idea of the Orient is a major motif in Chaucer and medieval romance, and this new study reveals much about its use and significance, setting the literature in its historical context and thereby offering fresh new readings of anumber of texts. The author begins by looking at Chaucer's and Gower's treatment of the legend of Constance, as told by the Man of Law, demonstrating that Chaucer's addition of a pattern of mercantile details highlights the commercial context of the eastern Mediterranean in which the heroine is placed; she goes on to show how Chaucer's portraits of Cleopatra and Dido from the Legend of Good Women, read against parallel texts, especially in Boccaccio, reveal them to be loci of medieval orientalism. She then examines Chaucer's inventive handling of details taken from Eastern sources and analogues in the Squire's Tale, showing how he shapes them into the western form ofinterlace. The author concludes by looking at two romances, Floris and Blauncheflur and Le Bone Florence of Rome; she argues that elements in Floris of sibling incest are legitimised into a quest for the beloved, and demonstrates that Le Bone Florence be related to analogous oriental tales about heroic women who remain steadfast in virtue against persecution and adversity.
Professor CAROL F. HEFFERNAN teaches in the Department ofEnglish, Rutgers University.
Ruth Morse
The Medieval Medea
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Wide-ranging study of the myth of Medea, concentrating on but not exclusively confined to its medieval incarnation.
New readings of the Morte Darthur place both book and author within the historical and cultural context of fifteenth-century England.
This book seeks to place Malory's Morte Darthur more firmly in its cultural and historical context. Its composition, in the mid to late fifteenth century, took place at a time of great upheaval for England, a period beginning with the loss of Bordeaux (and the Hundred Years War) and ending with the rise of Richard III. During this time the Morte was translated from numerous French sources, copied by scribes, and, finally, in July 1485, printed by William Caxton. The author argues that in this unique production history are reflected the ideological crises which loomed so massively over England's ruling class in the fifteenth century; and that the book is in fact inseparable from these crises.
THOMAS H. CROFTS is Assistant Professor of English at East Tennessee State University
William E. Fredeman
The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti 6
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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."
Andy Orchard
A Critical Companion to Beowulf
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A generous, energetic, engaging work... will be important to Beowulf study for years to come. THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW
Beowulf is the best known and most closely studied literary work surviving from Anglo-Saxon England, and the modern reader is faced with a bewildering number and variety of interpretations about such basic matters as the date, provenance, and significance of the poem. A Critical Companion to Beowulf addresses these and other issues, reviewing and synthesising previous scholarship, as well as offering fresh perspectives. After an initial introduction to the poem, attention is focused on such matters as the manuscript context and approaches to dating the poem; the particular style, diction, and structure of this most idiosyncratic of Old English texts; the background tothe poem (considered not simply with respect to historical and legendary material, but also in the context of myth and fable); the specific roles of selected individual characters, both major and minor; and the original intendedaudience and perceived purpose of the poem. A final chapter describes the range of critical approaches which have been applied to the poem in the past, and points towards directions for future study.
ANDY ORCHARD is Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, University of Oxford
Jeanne Shami
John Donne and Conformity in Crisis in the Late Jacobean Pulpit
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The sermons of John Donne are seen to embody the tensions and pressure on public religious discourse 1621 - 25.
This book considers the professional contribution of John Donne to an emerging homiletic public sphere in the last years of the Jacobean English Church (1621-25), arguing that his sermons embody the conflicts, tensions, and pressures on public religious discourse in this period; while they are in no way "typical" of any particular preaching agenda or style, they articulate these crises in their most complex forms and expose fault lines in the late JacobeanChurch. The study is framed by Donne's two most pointed contributions to the public sphere: his sermon defending James I's Directions to Preachers and his first sermon preached before Charles I in 1625. These two sermons emerge from the crises of controversy, censorship, and identity that converged in the late Jacobean period, and mark Donne's clearest professional interventions in the public debate about the nature and direction of the Church of England. In them, Donne interrogates the boundaries of the public sphere and of his conformity to the institutions, authorities, and traditions governing public debate in that sphere, modelling for his audience an actively engagedconformist identity.
Professor JEANNE SHAMI teaches in the Department of English at the University of Regina.
James P Carley
Arthurian Literature XIII
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Latest volume in this series containing the best new work on Arthurian topics.
Essays discussing the concept of globalisation as present in works of art and literature.
Like Freud's `civilisation', globalisation is both cause and consequence of its own discontents, visible at times only in the resistances it generates. Study of the phenomenon has until recently been confined largely to economists and political and social scientists. The present volume brings a range of literary and cultural analyses to bear to demonstrate both its actual time-depth and the all-encompassing nature of its influences on culture and consciousness. The English language and English literature have been major elements in its forging, underwriting first British and then American cultural hegemony.
Unlike most readings of globalisation, these essays depict notan irresistible juggernaut but a process that, in generating its own resistances, opens up the possibility of an alternative world order founded not on the inequities of power and capital, but on shared commitment to a fragile planet and a common and universal culture.
Contributors: STAN SMITH, GRAHAM HOLDERNESS, BRYAN LOUGHREY, JENNIFER BIRKETT, PHYLLIS LASSNER, SHARON OUDITT, TONY SHARPE, EDWARD LARRISSY, MICHAEL MURPHY, LIAM CONNELL
Kari Anne Rand
The Index of Middle English Prose
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`The Index of Middle English Prose when completed will be a monumental achievement' REVIEW OF ENGLISH STUDIES
Two very different collections are surveyed in this volume. The manuscripts of Pembroke College, Cambridge are typical of a medieval foundation. Its core of books is a working library of that period, representing the interests andneeds of its Fellows, very often given or bequeathed by them to the College. The collection was substantially enlarged in 1599 through the gift by William Smart of Ipswich of a large number of manuscripts which until the Reformation had belonged to the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds. By contrast the emphasis of the Fitzwilliam Museum collection is to a great extent art historical. At its heart are the manuscripts bequeathed by Lord Fitzwilliam in 1816. These were supplemented throughout the 19th century by a series of gifts and bequests, culminating in 1904 in the largest bequest to date, from Frank McClean, of some 203 manuscripts. In spite of the different character of the two collections, both contain a range of Middle English prose items, among them Chaucer's Boece, a complete Wycliffite sermon cycle and several Paston letters [all from Pembroke], the Anlaby Cartulary, the "Canutus" pestilence tract, the Brut, Lydgate's Serpent of Division and Nicholas Love's Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ (from the Fitzwilliam).
KARI ANNE RAND is Professor of Older English Literature at the University of Oslo.
Simon Horobin
The Language of the Chaucer Tradition
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A study of the language of Chaucerian manuscripts, printed editions and Chaucer's 15th century followers. Winner of the 2005 Beatrice White Prize for outstanding scholarly work in the field of English literature before 1590
The manuscript copies of Chaucer's works preserve valuable information concerning Chaucer's linguistic practices and the ways in which scribes responded to these. This book draws on recent developments in Middle English dialectology, textual criticism and the application of computers to manuscript studies to assess the evidence Chaucerian manuscripts provide for reconstructing Chaucer's own language and his linguistic environment. This book considershow scribes, editors and Chaucerian poets transmitted and updated Chaucer's language and the implications of this for our understanding of Chaucerian book production and reception, and the processes of linguistic change in the fifteenth century. Winner of the 2005 Beatrice White Prize for outstanding scholarly work in the field of English literature before 1590 SIMON HOROBIN lectures on English language at the University of Glasgow.
Stephen Knight
Robin Hood
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The major discovery of a late 17c manuscript of Robin Hood ballads is a significant event in the study of early English popular culture: fuller and variant ballad texts introduced with full critical apparatus.
The discovery of the Forresters Manuscript in 1993 cast new light on the Robin Hood ballad tradition. Dating from about 1670, it contains twenty-one ballads, with two versions of one, providing texts clearly superior to those available in Child's classic ballad collection: for example, the action of Robin Hood and Queen Katherine and The Noble Fisherman, obscure for centuries, is now clear in versions fuller than those apparently cut down tofit the size for broadside publication.Other Forresters texts of high interest are radically variant texts of Robin Hood and Allin a Dale, Robin Hood and the Bishop and The King's Disguise and Friendship with Robin Hood, the last two offering texts some seventy years earlier
This edition offers a full diplomatic text in original spelling with light modern punctuation, textual introductions, notes on text and meaning, glossary and bibliography. A General Introduction discusses the tendencies of the manuscript asa whole, and a Manuscript Description is provided by HILTON KELLIHER, Keeper of Western Manuscripts at the British Library.
STEPHEN KNIGHT is Professor of English Literature at the University of Wales at Cardiff.
Norris J. Lacy
A History of Arthurian Scholarship
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A survey of critical attention devoted to Arthurian matters.
This book offers the first comprehensive and analytical account of the development of Arthurian scholarship from the eighteenth century, or earlier, to the present day. The chapters, each written by an expert in the area under discussion, present scholarly trends and evaluate major contributions to the study of the numerous different strands which make up the Arthurian material: origins, Grail studies, editing and translation of Arthurian texts, medieval and modern literatures (in English and European languages), art and film. The result is an indispensable resource for students and a valuable guide for anyone with a serious interest in the Arthurian legend.
Contributors:NORRIS LACY, TONY HUNT, KEITH BUSBY, JANE TAYLOR, CHRISTOPHER SNYDER, RICHARD BARBER, SIAN ECHARD, GERALD MORGAN, ALBRECHT CLASSEN, ROGER DALRYMPLE, BART BESAMUSCA, MARIANNE E. KALINKE, BARBARA MILLER, CHRISTOPHER KLEINHENZ, MURIEL WHITAKER, JEANNE FOX-FRIEDMAN, DANIEL NASTALI, KEVIN J. HARTY
NORRIS J. LACY is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of French and Medieval Studies at Pennsylvania State University.
Robert Allen Rouse
The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England in Middle English Romance
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Investigation into the importance of the Anglo-Saxon past in medieval literature.
As the point of origin, both real and imagined, of English law and group identity, the Anglo-Saxon past was important in the construction of a post-Conquest English society that was both aware of, and placed great stock in, its Anglo-Saxon heritage; yet its depiction in post-Conquest literature has been very little studied. This book examines a wide range of sources (legal and historiographical as well as literary) in order to reveal a "social construction" of Anglo-Saxon England that held a significant place in the literary and cultural imagination of the post-Conquest English. Using a variety of texts, but the Matter of England romances in particular, the author argues that theyshow a continued interest in the Anglo-Saxon past, from the localised East Sussex legend of King Alfred that underlies the twelfth-century Proverbs of Alfred, to the institutional interest in the Guy of Warwick narrative exhibited by the community of St. Swithun's Priory in Winchester during the fifteenth century; they are part of a continued cultural remembrance that encompasses chronicles, folk memories, and literature.
Dr ROBERT ALLLEN ROUSE teaches in the Department of English, University of British Columbia.
Kathryn Powell, Donald Scragg
Apocryphal Texts and Traditions in Anglo-Saxon England
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Studies and editions of Anglo-Saxon apocryphal materials, filling a gap in literature available on the boundaries between apocryphal and orthodox in the period.
Apocrypha and apocryphal traditions in Anglo-Saxon England have been often referred to but little studied. This collection fills a gap in the study of pre-Conquest England by considering what were the boundaries between apocryphaland orthodox in the period and what uses the Anglo-Saxons made of apocryphal materials. The contributors include some of the most well-known and respected scholars in the field. The introduction - written by Frederick M. Biggs, one of the principal editors of Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture - expertly situates the essays within the field of apocrypha studies. The essays themselves cover a broad range of topics: both vernacular and Latin texts, those available in Anglo-Saxon England and those actually written there, and the uses of apocrypha in art as well as literature. Additionally, the book includes a number of completely new editions of apocryphal texts which were previously unpublished or difficult to access. By presenting these new texts along with the accompanying range of essays, the collection aims to retrieve these apocryphal traditions from the margins of scholarship and restore tothem some of the importance they held for the Anglo-Saxons.
Contributors: DANIEL ANLEZARK, FREDERICK M. BIGGS, ELIZABETH COATSWORTH, THOMAS N. HALL, JOYCE HILL, CATHERINE KARKOV, PATRIZIA LENDINARA, AIDEEN O'LEARY, CHARLES D. WRIGHT.
W.H. Jackson
Chivalry in Twelfth Century Germany
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The first book in English to cover the whole production of Hartmann von Aue (fl.1180-1203), a figure of paramount importance in the history of medieval German literature... His book is refreshing...and full of stimulating ideas. MEDIUM AEVUMFirst full-scale exploration of knighthood and chivalric values in poems of key figure in 12c German literature, Hartmann von Aue.
`Concerned principally to situate Hartmann's works in their social and cultural historical context, Jackson's carefully constructed and lucidly written book will be required and compelling reaading at every level of interest, fromundergraduate student to specialist scholar. It expounds knighthood as the major theme of Hartmann's varied oeuvre, reflected and refracted through the prism of different genres, fictional material and narrative positions. Jackson's unrivalled grasp of the historical evidence for the material, social and ideological dimensions of chivalry in the twelfth century is brought to bear on the texts in a way which never reduces these to mere functions of an extra-literary reality, but brings out the subtle and dynamic interplay of their aesthetic patterns and documentary correlatives... The book also builds up a persuasive framework for understanding Hartmann's literary production as a whole and for grasping it as an evolving reflection of and on knighthood as the key mode and model of social self-realisation for his chivalric audience.' FORUM FOR MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES Hartmann von Aue is a major figure in medieval German literature, and his works document key features of the history of chivalry in an important phase of transition and consolidation. This book is the first full-scale enquiry undertaken of the presentation of the role ofknighthood across the full range of Hartmann's works, considering the social, ideological and literary dimensions of chivalry and fruitfully combining literary, linguistic and historical approaches. The opening chapters place Hartmann's works in the broader perspective of Arthurian literature and of kingship and chivalry in western Europe, and in the context of the changing historical reality of knighthood as a military and a social order in twelfth-century Germany. Further chapters are devoted to each of his works, Erec, Gregorius, the Klage and his lyrics, Der arme Heinrich and Dwein, which are interpreted both with a historical
Robert Stanton
The Culture of Translation in Anglo-Saxon England
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Most Old English literature was translated or adapted from Latin: what was translated, and when, reflects cultural development and the increasing respectability of English.
Translation was central to Old English literature as we know it. Most Old English literature, in fact, was either translated or adapted from Latin sources, and this is the first full-length study of Anglo-Saxon translation as a cultural practice. This 'culture of translation' was characterised by changing attitudes towards English: at first a necessary evil, it can be seen developing increasing authority and sophistication. Translation's pedagogical function (already visible in Latin and Old English glosses) flourished in the centralizing translation programme of the ninth-century translator-king Alfred, and English translations of the Bible further confirmed the respectability ofEnglish, while Ælfric's late tenth-century translation theory transformed principles of Latin composition into a new and vigorous language for English preaching and teaching texts. The book will integrate the Anglo-Saxon period more fully into the longer history of English translation.ROBERT STANTON is Assistant Professor of English, Boston College, Massachusetts.
William E. Fredeman
The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti 5
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Breakdown and attempted suicide, and co-tenancy of Kelmscott Manor with Morris, balanced by usual professional concerns.
The best of these letters, flowing rapidly from his pen, radiate charisma and enthusiasm, warmth and care for his friends, and a total engagement with art and literature. JULIAN TREUHERZ, BURLINGTON MAGAZINE [on I. and II.] These years were the most tumultuous of Rossetti's life. His breakdown and attempted suicide inevitably makes the letters of this period exceptionally poignant, but the volume contains many letters relating to his life and work. Throughout most of 1871 he was writing and painting; he became, with William Morris, a co-tenant of Kelmscott Manor, bringing him close to Jane Morris and also to the two Morris daughters. In October the name of Robert Buchanan entersthe letters as the likely author of 'The Fleshly School of Poetry', and an alarming unease can be sensed. Following his attempted suicide and eventual return to Kelmscott, the letters increase in number - affectionate, considerate and businesslike by turns, with a certain morbidity at times; many letters are concerned with helping Ford Madox Brown's application for the Slade Professorship at Cambridge. The wider world of Victorian London is present: Turgenev comes to dinner, Browning sends his new volumes, Swinburne arrives drunk, and the American poet and adventurer Joaquin Miller makes himself known to the Rossetti circle. Nine appendices include five devoted to Poems and one tothe Fleshly School controversy.
Richard Barber
King Arthur in Music
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A survey of the influence of the Arthurian legends on musical works.
King Arthur in Music is the first book to be devoted to the subject. The range of musical material is too wide for a single author to tackle satisfactorily, and the nine contributors to this volume are experts in the very different fields involved. The first essay, by Robert Shay, deals with the late seventeenth century semi-opera King Arthur, while the final essay by William Everitt looks at the appearances of Arthur on stage and screen and the scores that have accompanied these. Between these two extremes, the main body of the book deals largely with opera as we now understand it, from Wagner's 'Tristan' and 'Parsifal' to Harrison Birtwistle's 'Sir Gawain and the GreenKnight'. Some works have never been performed, such as Hubert Parry's 'Guenever' and Rutland Boughton's Arthurian cycle, while others have only recently been staged or revived, such as Isaac AlbenÃz's 'Merlin' and Ernest Chausson's 'Le roi Artus', both striking post-Wagnerian works in very different styles: 'Merlin', for instance, begins with a passage based on Gregorian chant. The range of music is therefore wider than one might at first suspect, and other aspects of Arthurian music are brought out in the introduction, which is a general survey of the field, and in Jerome V.Reel's comprehensive listing of Arthurian musical items which is printed as an appendix. Contributors ROBERT ADLINGTON, RICHARD BARBER, WALTER A. CLARK, JEREMY DIBBLE, WILLIAM A. EVERITT, TONY HUNT, MICHAEL HURD, JEROME V. REEL, NIGEL SIMEONE, ROBERT SHAY, DEREK WATSON.
Francoise H M Le Saux
The Text and Tradition of Layamon's Brut
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Essays reflecting the present state of Layamon studies, identifying problems and outlining current directions in research.
This volume investigates the problems with which the contemporary reader of Layamon's Brut is faced: To what extent is the archaic feel of the Brut part of a deliberate aesthetic strategy of Layamon's? For what sortof audience could it have been written? How can one define its relation to older or more recent texts and traditions? What ideological stance (if any) is to be deduced from the work? The seventeen articles in this book tackle the different issues from a variety of fields: codicology and palaeography; Linguistics, stylists and syntax; the socio-political dimension of the work and its possible audience; the tradition upon which Layamon was drawing, and his contribution to later writers; literary theory and more general issues such as gender and spatial symbolism in the Brut. A number of essays present a synthesis of points of view, specifically intended to provide students with a yardstick against which to measure the more controversial articlesin the volume.
Contributors: MARIE-FRANÇOISE ALAMICHEL, ROSAMUND ALLEN, STEPHEN K. BREHE, BETH BRYAN, ARTHUR WAYNE GLOWKA, MARSHAL S. GRANT, DOUGLAS MOFFAT, YOKO IYEIRI, LESLEY JOHNSON, FRANÇOICE LE SAUX, JAMES I. McNELIS III, JAMES NOBLE, HERBERT PILCH, JANE ROBERTS, ERIC G. STANLEY, CAROLE WEINBERG, KELLEY M. WICKHAM-CROWLEY, NEIL WRIGHT
Dr FRANCOISE LE SAUXlectures in Medieval English language and literature at the University of Lausanne.
David W. Porter
Excerptiones de Prisciano
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First edition of 10th-century compendium of grammatical lore, second only in importance to Ælfric's own Grammar.
When the famous Anglo-Saxon scholar Ælfric wrote the first grammar in a European vernacular, he used as his direct source the Excerptiones de Prisciano excerpts from major curriculum authors of the medieval schools, including Donatus, Isidore and Priscian himself . The tenth-century text, probably of English origin, most probably compiled by Ælfric, is an ambitious compendium of grammatical lore, and it is, with the exception of Ælfric's own Grammar, arguably the most sophisticated Latin-learning text of the Anglo-Saxon age. Edited here for the first time,the Excerptiones appear with all scholia, an English translation, and a full contextual introduction.
DAVID W. PORTER is Professor of English, Southern University, Baton Rouge.
Yoko Wada
A Companion to Ancrene Wisse
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Ancrene Wisse introduced through a variety of cultural and critical approaches which establish the originality and interest of the treatise.
The thirteenth-century Ancrene Wisse is a guide for female recluses. Addressed to three young sisters of gentle birth, it teaches what truly good anchoresses should and should not do, offering in its examples a glimpse of the real life women had in England in the middle ages. It is also important for its evidence for the continuation of the Anglo-Saxon tradition of prose writing, being produced in the West Midlands where Old English writing conventions continued to develop even after the Norman conquest. The Companion addresses the cultural and historical background, the affiliations of the versions, genre, authorship and language; the various approaches also includea feminist reading of the text.
Contributors: ROGER DAHOOD, RICHARD DANCE, A.S.G. EDWARDS, CATHERINE INNES-PARKER, BELLA MILLETT, CHRISTINA VON NOLCKEN, ELIZABETH ROBERTSON, ANNE SAVAGE, D.A. TROTTER, YOKO WADA, NICHOLAS WATSON.
J. Allan Mitchell
Ethics and Exemplary Narrative in Chaucer and Gower
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A lively defence of the ethics of exemplary narrative, and a detailed account of its forms and functioning in the works of Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower.
Why do medieval writers routinely make use of exemplary rhetoric? How does it work, and what are its ethical and poetical values? And if Chaucer and Gower must be seen as vigorously subverting it, then why do they persist in using it? Borrowing from recent developments in ethical criticism and theory, this book addresses such questions by reconstructing a late medieval rationale for the ethics of exemplary narrative. The author argues that Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Gower's Confessio Amantis attest to the vitality of a narrative - rather than strictly normative - ethics that has roots in premodern traditions of practical reason and rhetoric. Chaucer and Gower are shown to be inheritors and respecters of an early and unexpected form of ethical pragmatism - which has profound implications for the orthodox history of ethics in the West. Recipient of the 2008 John H. Fisher Award forsignificant contribution to the field of Gower Studies.
Dr J. ALLAN MITCHELL teaches in the Department of English, University of Victoria.
Leslie J. Workman
Studies in Medievalism V
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Concentrating on Europe, this volume's sixteen essays discuss different forms of medievalism in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Serbia.
Medievalism, the whole spectrum of post-medieval response to the middle ages, is now accepted as a vital key to the understanding of Western culture and society from 1500 to the present, pervading every aspect of our time, from the popular and artistic to the scholarly. Studies in Medievalism, now published annually, is the one series to provide a regular forum for discussion of medievalism. This volume is devoted to medievalism in Europe, excludingEngland (the subject of Volume IV,1992). Contributors from Europe and America consider medievalism in Germany, Italy, France, Spain and Serbia over a wide range of topics from eighteenth-century French politics and nineteenth-century German nationalism to contemporary Italian film.
Nicholas Perkins
Hoccleve's Regiment of Princes: Counsel and Constraint
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Hoccleve, often considerd conventional and naive, is shown to be deeply engaged in the political and literary currents of his time.
The 'new' new historicist shift from a Foucauldian modelling of the infinitely malleable instrumentation of power, in which writers like Hoccleve are inevitably complicit, to a more flexible model in which authority is typically anxious and unstable, open to compromise and negotiation, and where writers can mak significant interventions, is welcome. Perkins's book is a triumph of this new approach. MEDIUM AEVUM [Derek Pearsall]
This is the first book-length study of Hoccleve's Regiment of Princes. It is an excellent one; critically alert and sensitive to the potential of a variety of fruitful approaches to Hoccleve'smajor poem.... helpfully contextualises Hoccleve's poem in a far more comprehensive way than previously... combines critical and scholarly acumen to give us a book that will be the necessary departure for any future study of The Regiment of Princes. A.S.G. EDWARDS, NOTES AND QUERIES
Thomas Hoccleve's politics and poetics have often been viewed as conventional, servile and naive. In the first book-length study of Hoccleve's major poem,Nicholas Perkins argues that The Regiment of Princes is in fact deeply engaged in the political and literary currents of the early fifteenth century, combining the elaborate deference of a petition, the resistance of a complaint and the monitory authority of a speculum principis in its address to the future Henry V. Perkins sets the Regiment's production within a late-medieval economy of advisory speech, reassesses the poem's relationship to the Latin treatises on which it draws, and examines its hermeneutics of royal counsel, which challenges the prince to interpret and act on the advice he receives. Using evidence from the Regiment's many manuscripts,he then reveals how Hoccleve's poem was refashioned for new audiences beyond the Lancastrian court in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.
NICHOLAS PERKINS teaches at St Hugh's College, Oxford.
Mary-Rose McLaren
The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century
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The first attempt by ordinary lay people - merchants, scriveners, craftsmen - to write their own history, and its effect on the growth and development of London.
The early fifteenth century witnessed the first attempt made by ordinary lay people - merchants, scriveners, craftsmen - to write their own history, in the so-called "London chronicles", which have had a profound effect upon the growth and development of London. The earliest of the extant chronicles represents the first generation of historical writing to be undertaken in English since the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, and reflects an important shift in the movement from a primarily oral to a literate culture. However, despite their significance for evidence of this change, and as a secular and largely vernacular voice, much about the London chronicles remain a mystery. This study, the first for over 80 years, includes manuscripts unknown to Kingsford in his 1913 survey, studies them in relation to each other, and draws together what can be known about their origins, purpose and effect upon their audience. It alsoprovides an annotated edition of the previously unpublished text of Bradford, West Yorkshire Archives, MS 32D86/42, while a selection of crucial events recorded in the chronicles -- such as the Rising of 1381 and Cade's Rebellion-- is presented in an appendix.
MARY-ROSE McLAREN gained her Ph.D. from the University of Melbourne.
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