Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Homoerotic Medievalism: Looking At Queer Desire In The Homosocial Relationships Of Chaucer’S “The Knight’S Tale” And Fletcher And Shakespeare’S The Two Noble Kinsmen, Juan P. Espinosa

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to explore queer interiority within the heteronormative social constructions of late medieval England. Queer interiority is not an occurrence of modernity, but rather a response to social constructions that date back to the Middle Ages. It is essential to account for queerness in the Middle Ages because authors like Chaucer promote the successive resurfacing of queer characters within heteronormative social constructions. Writing during the queer reign of Richard II, Chaucer constructs the interior identities of Palamon and Arcite as a reflection of the king and the political norms of England. Inspired by Chaucer, authors …

Knights Of The Middle Ages, David Sikes

History Class Publications

As humans began to grow in numbers, they began to create civilizations for themselves in order to better survive, and as those civilizations grew, there came to be a divergence of roles for people to perform. The most universal of all these was the Warrior Elite, a class of people who were part of the lesser nobility and would function as officers and generals in times of conflict. For Japan it was the Samurai, for Iran it was the Persian Immortals, and for Europe in the 9^th to late 15^th century, there were the Knights. Let us look …

The Light Of The Middle Ages, David Duwal

Undergraduate Student Scholarship – History

This essay presents a description of three medieval candlesticks as well as an argument about their purposes other than for holding candles. It explores the symbolic and religious nature of medieval design, especially in regard to the natural and bestial. Accompanying is a digital exhibition of the three candlesticks that includes close-up images of the details discussed in the essay.

A Historiography Of Nationalism: And The Case For Scandinavia, Alexander L. Jacobson

Summer Research

This project surveys the historiography of nationalism and its theoretical shortcomings. It builds upon the work of emerging theorists and revisionists across a wide variety of disciplines and this project then contextualizes nationalism and its related theories in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. After establishing a firm history, the project ends with a quick survey of Medieval Scandinavian History and suggest that this region developed a proto-nationalism during the period. Moreover, this project looks to insert the developments of the Middle Ages into the scholarly discourse surrounding nationalism. In opposition to modernist theories of nationalism—who point to the …

Modern Intolerance And The Medieval Crusades [Excerpted From Whose Middle Ages?], Nicholas L. Paul

History

Whose Middle Ages? is an interdisciplinary collection of short, accessible essays intended for the non-specialist reader and ideal for teaching at an undergraduate level. Each of twenty-two essays takes up an area where humans have dug for meaning into the medieval past and brought something distorted back into the present: in our popular entertainment; in our news, our politics, and our propaganda; and in subtler ways that inform how we think about our histories, our countries, and ourselves. Each author teases out the stakes of a history that has refused to remain past and uses the tools of the academy …

How The Catholic Church Came To Oppose Birth Control, Lisa Mcclain

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the landmark “Humanae Vitae,” Pope Paul VI’s strict prohibition against artificial contraception, issued in the aftermath of the development of the birth control pill. At the time, the decision shocked many Catholic priests and laypeople. Conservative Catholics, however, praised the pope for what they saw as a confirmation of traditional teachings.

Book Review Of Merchant Writers: Florentine Memoirs From The Middle Ages And Renaissance, Brian Jeffrey Maxson

ETSU Faculty Works

Review of Merchant Writers: Florentine Memoirs from the Middle Ages and Renaissance by Vittore Branca

Bridget Of Sweden (1303-1373) As Author, Mark E. Peterson

Libraries

No abstract provided.

(Review) Alter, Krankheit, Tod Und Herrschaft Im Frühen Mittelalter: Das Beispiel Der Karolinger, Frederick S. Paxton

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Local Histories, John G. H. Hudson

Book Chapters

This chapter looks at how local historical writing is prominent in medieval historiography, just as local affairs dominated most lives in the Middle Ages. However, the term and category local history is a modern concept, not a medieval one. Furthermore, even as a modern analytic category, local history can be problematic. One might ask whether the category should include powerful counties but not small kingdoms, or national histories with local sections or brief local elements. In England, the Anglo Saxon Chronicle was primarily concerned with national affairs, but also mentioned events in the particular monasteries where the various versions were …

Review Of Elisabeth Vavra, Ed. Der Wald Im Mittelalter, Richard Utz

Medieval Institute Affiliated Faculty & Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Richard Newhauser (Ed.), The Seven Deadly Sins: From Communities To Individuals (Book Review), Denise A. Kaiser

History Faculty Publications

Book review by Denise Kaiser:

ISBN 9789004157859

(Review) Mémoires Carolingiennes: L’Épitaphe Entre Célébration Mémorielle, Genre Littéraire Et Manifeste Politique, Frederick S. Paxton

History Faculty Publications

The article reviews the book "Mémoires carolingiennes: L'épitaphe entre célébration mémorielle, genre littéraire et manifeste politique (milieu VIIIe-début XIe siècle," by Cécile Treffort.

(Review) Struggle For Empire: Kingship And Conflict Under Louis The German, 817-76, Frederick S. Paxton

History Faculty Publications

Reviews Eric J. Goldberg's, Struggle for Empire: Kingship and Conflict under Louis the German, 817–876. (Conjunctions of Religion and Power in the Medieval Past.) Ithaca, N.Y., and London: Cornell University Press, 2006. Pp. xxiii, 385; black-and-white figures, genealogical tables, and maps. $47.50.

Shifting Experiences: The Changing Roles Of Women In The Italian, Lowland, And German Regions Of Western Europe From The Middle Ages To The Early Modern Period, Susan Papino

Senior Honors Projects

As the culture of the Middle Ages declined and Early Modern period characterized by a revival of humanistic ideals of the Renaissance commenced, the society of Western Europe underwent many changes. Different attitudes emerged concerning cultural values, and the medieval feudal way of life that has often been interpreted as being antiquated and obsolete gave way to more modern political, economic, and social systems. The question still remains, however, of exactly how women, an often underrepresented part of society, were affected by these so-called modernizing changes. The scope of this research is to basically address this question and examine the …

Evidence Of Sanctity: Record-Keeping And Canonization At The Turn Of The 13th Century, Michelle Light

Library Faculty Publications

In 1234, the papacy asserted an exclusive right to canonize saints. To gain control over the canonization process, popes required increasingly specific written evidence from communities about their saints and developed investigative procedures to authenticate the communities’ miraculous evidence. Gathering written testimony for review in Rome was an act of domination over local processes for sanctifying community members. Not only did papal record-keeping remove decision-making from local hands, but it also enabled review of correct belief, structured community responses to the sacred, and provided an effective display of papal rights. During the process of St. Gilbert of Sempringham in 1201–1203, …

(Review) The Myth Of Nations: The Medieval Origins Of Europe, Frederick S. Paxton

History Faculty Publications

Reviews Patrick J. Geary's, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe. First paperback ed. Princeton N.J., and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003. Pp. xi, 199. $16.95.

Conference Queers The Middle Ages, Francesca Sautman

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

On November 5-7, the groundbreaking "Queer Middle Ages" conference took place at the CUNY Graduate Center and at NYU, and drew an attendance of over 150 people. Plenary speakers included Judith Bennett (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), Michael Camille (University of Chicago), Carolyn Dinshaw (University of California, Berkeley), and Everett K. Rowson (University of Pennsylvania).

The Guitar In The Middle Ages And Renaissance, Julie D. Carmen

Library Scholarship

In the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) world there are high standards for recovering and reconstructing the truth in history. Recorded history determines how we re-create the Middle Ages, and it is with much determination that we search for as many facts as possible for each of our varied interests. This article seeks to clarify the historical authenticity of one of the most popular musical instruments, the guitar.

Liturgy And Healing In An Early Medieval Saint's Cult: The Mass In Honore Sancti Sigismundi For The Cure Of Fevers, Frederick S. Paxton

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Signa Mortifera: Death And Prognostication In Early Medieval Monastic Medicine, Frederick S. Paxton

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Medieval Librarian: Information Management In The Southwest German Empire At The Close Of The Middle Ages, Albert Winkler

Faculty Publications

The direct precursor of the modern librarian or archivist was the medieval scribe or notary. This person was responsible for the production or identification, storage, and retrieval of information and was the first information manager since antiquity to use vernacular languages in documents and books. The medieval information manager was highly educated and was often a prestigious and powerful official in whom important information and state secrets were entrusted. The civic secular scribes borrowed much from church practices but also worked out their own methods of source composition, verification, arrangement, and preservation. These procedures developed into many of the practices …

The Punctator's World: A Discursion (Part Three), Gwen G. Robinson

The Courier

This is the third in a series of articles on the past and future of punctuation. The years under focus here are crucial ones, for they include the invention of the printing press and the shift it caused in the human response to the written word.

1. The Revival Of Commerce, Robert L. Bloom, Basil L. Crapster, Harold A. Dunkelberger, Charles H. Glatfelter, Richard T. Mara, Norman E. Richardson, W. Richard Schubart

Section V: The Rise of Capitalism and the National State to 1500

Throughout the Middle Ages, and indeed until quite recent times, Europe's economy was primarily agrarian. From the eleventh century onward however, commerce followed by manufacturing and urbanization, became increasingly characteristic of Western Europe's society. But the old made way for the new so slowly that the shift may be clearly discerned only through the lengthened perspective of the years. [excerpt]

6. John Wyclif's Divine Dominion And The End Of The Middle Ages, Robert L. Bloom, Basil L. Crapster, Harold A. Dunkelberger, Charles H. Glatfelter, Richard T. Mara, Norman E. Richardson, W. Richard Schubart

Section IV: The Medieval Ferment

John Wyclif (c. 1320-1384) has been called both the last of the schoolmen and the morning star of the Reformation. A native Englishman and a Franciscan, he spent most of his life at the University of Oxford, first as scholar, later as teacher of theology, and, from 1356 to 1382, as master of Balliol College. He witnessed the opening battles of the Hundred Years' War between England and France (1337-1453) with its heavy toll of life, the beginning of the Great Schism (1378-1417) during which there was one pope at and another at Avignon, and finally the spectacle of peasant …

3. The Church's Bid For Worldwide Leadership, Robert L. Bloom, Basil L. Crapster, Harold A. Dunkelberger, Charles H. Glatfelter, Richard T. Mara, Norman E. Richardson, W. Richard Schubart

Section III: The Medieval Church

The Church in the West had made the claim that it could and would bring all men into subjection to godliness, and that in so doing it would create a universal Christian society. Because of the great influence wielded in medieval society by the feudal nobles, the Church was particularly interested in directing their activities to what it considered to be useful ends. Accordingly, as we have already seen, it gave a religious coloration to knighthood and preached that knights should fight only in such just causes as defending the helpless and protecting the innocent. About the year 1000, synods …

7. The Two Swords In Theory And Practice, Robert L. Bloom, Basil L. Crapster, Harold A. Dunkelberger, Charles H. Glatfelter, Richard T. Mara, Norman E. Richardson, W. Richard Schubart

Section III: The Medieval Church

The claims to universality advanced by the medieval Church brought it into close relationship with an ancient human institution: the state. Especially after the fourth century, when it was first recognized and then given status as the only legal religious body, it was necessary for the Church to formulate a set of poliyical principles, comparable to those for economic activity, which could then be applied to the many and continuing relations between church and state. The general outline of these principles was completed by 500 and was transmitted to the Middle Ages. [excerpt]

2. The Means Of Grace, Robert L. Bloom, Basil L. Crapster, Harold A. Dunkelberger, Charles H. Glatfelter, Richard T. Mara, Norman E. Richardson, W. Richard Schubart

Section III: The Medieval Church

Central to the medieval Church and the ultimate source of its power, both spiritual and temporal, was its possession of the sacraments. The sacraments were based on the belief that what man could not do for himself God could and would do for him. Medieval man believed that there were at least two things that it was impossible for him to do: he could not create himself and he could not save himself. But the same God who had created man stood ready to snatch him from the terrible consequences of his sinfulness. This great favor was accomplished through the …

1. A Brief Survey Of Christendom, 500-1100, Robert L. Bloom, Basil L. Crapster, Harold A. Dunkelberger, Charles H. Glatfelter, Richard T. Mara, Norman E. Richardson, W. Richard Schubart

Section III: The Medieval Church

The towering institution of the Middle Ages was the Church. From birth until death both the highest lord and the lowest serf felt its influence in some way or another, directly or indirectly. After about the year 1000 all men in Western Europe, except for a few Jews and Muslims, were its members. They were expected to support the Church in every way. It was not possible for one with a secular turn of mind to go to the priest and ask, in effect, to have his name erased from the Church's rolls. Even the passing of time was now …

4. The Church's Bid For Intellectual Leadership, Robert L. Bloom, Basil L. Crapster, Harold A. Dunkelberger, Charles H. Glatfelter, Richard T. Mara, Norman E. Richardson, W. Richard Schubart

Section III: The Medieval Church

We have already noted the Church's claim to teach "in all its fulness every doctrine that men ought to be brought to know, and that regarding things visible and invisible, in heaven and on earth." During the Dark Ages it was too busy with other problems to be able to concern itself much with education. While there were sporadic attempts earlier, it was only during the eleventh and twelfth centuries that the Church turned more seriously to the problem of educating its members. This work was carried on primarily in the monastery and cathedral schools. But, because the monasteries of …