Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Corporeality Of Clothing In Medieval Literature: Cognition, Kinesis, And The Sacred, Sarah Brazil

Early Drama, Art, and Music

Every known society wears some form of clothing. It is central to how we experience our bodies and how we understand the sociocultural dimensions of our embodiment. It is also central to how we understand works of literature. In this innovative study, Brazil demonstrates how medieval writers use clothing to direct readers’ and spectators’ awareness to forms of embodiment. Offering insights into how poetic works, plays, and devotional treatises target readers’ kinesic intelligence—their ability to understand movements and gestures—Brazil demonstrates the theological implications of clothing, often evinced by how garments limit or facilitate the movements and postures of bodies in …

Inventing Modernity In Medieval European Thought Ca. 1100–Ca. 1550, Bettina Koch, Cary J. Nederman

Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

One of the most challenging problems in the history of Western ideas stems from the emergence of Modernity out of the preceding period of the Latin Middle Ages. This volume develops and extends the insights of the noted scholar Thomas M. Izbicki into the so-called medieval/modern divide. The contributors include a wide array of eminent international scholars from the fields of History, Theology, Philosophy, and Political Science, all of whom explore how medieval ideas framed and shaped the thought of later centuries. This sometimes involved the evolution of intellectual principles associated with the definition and imposition of religious orthodoxy. Also …

The Medieval Best-Seller: Part Ii, Jillian M. Ewalt

Marian Library Faculty Publications

If you are around Christian homes or churches this time of year, one image you might be seeing a lot of is the Nativity. But have you ever wondered what a Nativity might have looked like in the Middle Ages? The Books of Hours in the Marian Library’s collection can give us a glimpse into the 500-year-old iconography of Christmas Day.

Ever wondered what the Nativity looked like to Medieval eyes? Why is Mary always on the left (... and frequently blond)? And what does Bridget of Sweden have to do with it? Keep reading to find out!

Second blog …

The Lay Folks’ Catechism, Alliterative Verse, And Cursus, Ian Cornelius

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Lay Folks’ Catechism is an English rendering of injunctions issued in 1357 by John Thoresby, Archbishop of York, setting forth the elements of Christian belief. Ever since W. W. Skeat’s treatments, the Catechism has been placed in the general orbit of alliterative verse, yet closer identifications have proved elusive. The text is now recorded in both The Index of Middle English Verse and The Index of Middle English Prose; the principal stylistic study proposes that John Gaytryge, the author of the English text, may have been influenced by the system of Latin prose rhythm known as cursus. …

How The ‘Abortion Miracle’ Motif In Medieval Irish Hagiographies Structured Gender Roles In Relation To Female Reproductivity And Sexual Sin, Lora Lynn Horner

Essential Studies UNDergraduate Showcase

Four Irish Saints are accredited to performing abortions, otherwise known as the ‘Abortion Miracle’ motif. These four Saints are St. Brigid of Kildare, Ciarán of Saigir, Áed mac Bricc, and Cainnech of Aghoboe. In each of these four Saints lives they share a similar motif in which they bless a mother’s womb resulting in the mother no longer being pregnant. These ‘abortion miracles’ created structured gender roles in which a masculine figure would partake in the intervention of a female and a female’s reproductivity. The intervention of the Saints would come when the women would start to become visually pregnant …

Ecstasy In The Classroom: Trance, Self, And The Academic Profession In Medieval Paris, Ayelet Even-Ezra

Religion

Can ecstatic experiences be studied with the academic instruments of rational investigation? What kinds of religious illumination are experienced by academically minded people? And what is the specific nature of the knowledge of God that university theologians of the Middle Ages enjoyed compared with other modes of knowing God, such as rapture, prophecy, the beatific vision, or simple faith? Ecstasy in the Classroom explores the interface between academic theology and ecstatic experience in the first half of the thirteenth century, formative years in the history of the University of Paris, medieval Europe’s “fountain of knowledge.” It considers little-known texts by …

The Medieval Best-Seller: Part I, Jillian M. Ewalt

Marian Library Faculty Publications

In a recent New York Times article, Tina Jordan explored books and authors that appeared on the best-seller list 25, 50 and 75 years ago. In 1993, there were plenty of familiar names (at least to me) like John Grisham, Stephen King and Anne Rice. Go back in time a little further to 1968, and Charles Portis’ True Grit was topping the charts (Coen brothers’ remake, anyone?). In 1943, Ayn Rand came in at No. 9 with The Fountainhead.

First of three blogs by the author about Books of Hours.

But have you ever wondered what the best-seller list …

The Saga Of The Jómsvikings: A Translation With Full Introduction, Alison Finlay, Þórdís Edda Jóhannesdóttir

Northern Medieval World

Unique among the Icelandic sagas, part-history, part-fiction, the Saga of the Jómsvikings tells of a legendary band of vikings, originally Danish, who established an island fortress off the Baltic coast, and launched and ultimately lost their heroic attack on the pagan ruler of Norway in the late tenth century. The saga's account of their stringent warrior code, fatalistic adherence to their own reckless vows, and declarations of extreme courage as they face execution articulates a remarkable account of what it meant to be a viking. This translation presents the longest and earliest text of the saga, never before published in …

Literary Culture In Early Christian Ireland: Hiberno-Latin Saints’ Lives As A Source For Seventh-Century Irish History, John Higgins

Doctoral Dissertations

The writers of seventh-century Irish saints’ Lives created the Irish past. Their accounts of the fifth-and-sixth century saints framed the narrative of early Irish Christianity for their contemporary and later audience. Cogitosus’s Life of Brigit, Muirchú’s and Tírechán’s accounts of Saint Patrick, and Adomnán’s Life of Columba have guided the understanding of early Irish history from then until now. Unlike other early texts these Lives are securely dated. Composed as tools in the discourse regarding authority in seventh-century Irish ecclesiastical and secular politics, they provide historical insights not available from other sources. In the seventh century Armagh and Kildare …

Re-Playing Maimonides’ Codes: Designing Games To Teach Religious Legal Systems, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

Lost & Found is a game series, created at the Initiative for

Religion, Culture, and Policy at the Rochester Institute of

Technology MAGIC Center.1 The series teaches medieval

religious legal systems. This article uses the first two games

of the series as a case study to explore a particular set of

processes to conceive, design, and develop games for learning.

It includes the background leading to the author's work

in games and teaching religion, and the specific context for

the Lost & Found series. It discusses the rationale behind

working to teach religious legal systems more broadly, then

discuss the …

Turning Back The Tides: The Anglo-Saxon Vice Of Ofermod In Tolkien's Fall Of Arthur, Colin J. Cutler

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Tolkien’s Fall of Arthur has at its heart the theme of ofermod, a theme which appears throughout Tolkien’s criticism and creative work. In his essay “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son,” he argues that the Anglo-Saxon word ofermod in the poem The Battle of Maldon condemns the warband’s leader for an over-reaching pride which places his men in desperate straits. This paper conducts a study of the word and its derivatives in various Anglo-Saxon texts, taking the Microfiche Concordance to Old English as its starting point, and traces Tolkien’s creative use of the theme in both his tales of Middle-earth …

Memorializing The Middle Classes In Medieval And Renaissance Europe, Anne C. Leader

Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

Memorializing the Middle Classes in Medieval and Renaissance Europe investigates commemorative practices in Cyprus, Flanders, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Spain between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries. Offering a broad overview of memorialization practices across Europe and the Mediterranean, individual chapters examine local customs through particular case studies. These essays explore complementary themes through the lens of commemorative art, including social status; personal and corporate identities; the intersections of mercantile, intellectual, and religious attitudes; upward (and downward) mobility; and the cross-cultural exchange of memorialization strategies.

Influences Of Pre-Christian Mythology And Christianity On Old Norse Poetry: A Narrative Study Of Vafþrúðnismál, Andrew E. Mcgillivray

Northern Medieval World

In this study, McGillivray explores the cultural environment in which the Eddic poem Vafþrúðnismál was composed and re-examines the relationship between form and content in the poem and the respective influences of pre-Christian beliefs and Christian religion on the text. The poem has a dual aspect, acting as a poetic framework and functioning as a sacred story. It serves both as a representation of early pagan beliefs or myths and also as a myth itself, relating the journey of the Norse god Óðinn to the hall of the ancient and wise giant Vafþrúðnir, where Óðinn craftily engages his adversary in …

New Studies In The Manuscript Tradition Of Njáls Saga: The Historia Mutila Of Njála, Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir, Emily Lethbridge

Northern Medieval World

Njáls saga is the best known and most highly regarded of all medieval Icelandic sagas and it occupies a special place in Icelandic cultural history. The manuscript tradition is exceptionally rich and extensive. The oldest extant manuscripts date to only a couple of decades after the saga's composition in the late thirteenth century and the saga was subsequently copied by hand continuously up until the twentieth century, even alongside the circulation of printed text editions in latter centuries. The manuscript corpus as a whole has great socio-historical value, showcasing the myriad ways in which generations of Icelanders interpreted the saga …

Covetousness In Book 5 Of Confessio Amantis: A Medieval Precursor To Neoliberalism, Jeffery G. Stoyanoff

Accessus

In Book 5 of John Gower’s Confessio Amantis, Genius’s extended discussion of Covetousness demonstrates how this subtype of Avarice leads to the ruin of the networks of collectives that make up society. Interestingly, the process by which Covetousness damages the collectives that make up these networks looks a lot like the neoliberalism that has come to dominate a number of governments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Gower’s tales trace the spread of this sin from the top of society to the bottom; from the highly public to the intimately personal. In all scenarios, Covetousness is a force of …

Preface, Georgiana Donavin, Eve Salisbury

Accessus

This preface introduces Accessus 4.2.

Remix The Medieval Manuscript: Experiments With Digital Infrastructure, Laura Braunstein, Michelle R. Warren, Baylauris Byrnesim

Dartmouth Library Staff Publications

Remix the Manuscript: A Chronicle of Digital Experiments is a collaborative research project that takes up this challenge. It brings together academics, librarians, technologists, conservators, and students to study the many permutations of a single manuscript—a fifteenth-century Middle English prose chronicle of Great Britain, commonly referred to as the “Prose Brut.” Our project raises fundamental questions about the digital research environment. How is today’s code configuring tomorrow’s historical knowledge? How do digital technologies affect our access to and understanding of material culture? By investigating these broad questions through the example of one manuscript, we define a limited yet infinitely …

Unusual Accidental Signs, Microtonal Inflections, And Marchetto Of Padua, Alan D. Richtmyer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis addresses the question of how an interval roughly half the width of the minor semitone could be incorporated into the otherwise strictly diatonic framework of the medieval gamut and then asks whether certain unusual accidentals signs found in fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century sources were meant to signal such inflections.

It demonstrates that when a tone is subdivided so as to produce a microtone, the chromatic part that remains must either be made explicit, or must be transferred elsewhere in the scale so that the encompassing framework of the gamut will remain intact. It shows that when the former …

“Dyrne Langað”: Secret Longing And Homo-Amory In Beowulf And J.R.R. Tolkien’S The Lord Of The Rings, Christopher Vaccaro

Journal of Tolkien Research

“‘Dyrne Langað’: Secret Longing and Homo-amory in Beowulf and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings” investigates the close “homoamorous” relationship between Frodo and Samwise, employing a close reading of select passages from the eighth-century English poem, Beowulf. The argument begins with a clarification of terms. Afterwards, it focuses upon the cruces related to a key scene involving Beowulf’s departure and compares the intensity of the unspoken love Hroðgar has for Beowulf to the love Sam has for Frodo at the Grey Havens. Ultimately, the essay argues for a new way of reading both departure scenes.

The Inklings And King Arthur (2017), Edited By Sørina Higgins, Gabriel Schenk

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review by Gabriel Schenk of The Inklings and King Arthur (2017) ed, by Sørina Higgins

The Lost & Found Game Series: Teaching Medieval Religious Law In Context, Owen Gottlieb, Ian Schreiber

Presentations and other scholarship

Lost & Found is a strategy card-to-mobile game series that teaches medieval religious legal systems with attention to period accuracy and cultural and historical context. The Lost & Found project seeks to expand the discourse around religious legal systems, to enrich public conversations in a variety of communities, and to promote greater understanding of the religious traditions that build the fabric of the United States. Comparative religious literacy can build bridges between and within communities and prepare learners to be responsible citizens in our pluralist democracy. The first game in the series is a strategy game called Lost & Found …

Defining Communal Identity In The Ottoman Empire: Hagop Gagosian And The Mormon Armenians, 1890–1910, Courtney Cook

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

“A Kindred Sigh For Thee”: British Responses To The Greek War For Independence, Susannah Morrison

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

"Some Dreamers Of The Golden Dream": The Construction Of The Golden Age Myth(S) In The Age Of Ottoman Decline, Ian Mclaughlin

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

This paper considers the role and construction of golden age myths in seventeenth-century debates about how to renew the flagging Ottoman Empire. Policymakers and preachers prescribed radically different solutions based on which golden age they idealized—whether the time of the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century or the reign of Sultan Suleiman in the sixteenth. Throughout most of the 1600s, the pendulum swung back and forth violently depending on which faction had the sultan’s ear. Charismatic mosque preachers like Kadizade Efendi whipped up Istanbul crowds against coffee, while advice writers such as Koçi Bey urged expelling “outsiders” from the military …

“It Is A Privilege To Pee”: The Rise And Demise Of The Pay Toilet In America, Katie Richards

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

From The Editor, Ian Mclaughlin

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

Department Awards

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

Seasoned Antisemitism: Cannibalism In The Destruction Of Jerusalem, Bailey Ludwig

English Summer Fellows

My project examines an episode of maternal cannibalism within the medieval poem The Destruction of Jerusalem. Several variations of the story of the 70 AD Roman siege of Jerusalem that include this particular episode exist; the story even has roots in the bible. I am looking at the poem within this context and noting its differences in order to best determine its intentions. This version, more so than any other I have encountered, eliminates complicating factors, such as the murder of the child or presence of male figures, in order to make its antisemitic message as direct as possible. The …

"A Page From The Song Of Songs": Études In Allegoresis, Andres Wilson

Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines some of the ways in which exegetical traditions and other medieval creative work grew out of the conventional hermeneutics of allegorizing the biblical Song of Songs. Beginning with a close reading of the Hebrew poem itself, this work continues by probing the unique disconnect between the Song’s literal meaning that exegetes either struggled to comprehend or chose to ignore, and the poem’s significance as a sacrosanct, canonical text in both the Jewish and Christian worlds. The displacement of the poem’s literal reading for an amorphous figurative one resulted in a rich legacy of creative commentary and literary …

La Influencia De Boccaccio En La Literatura Catalana Medieval (1390-1495). Un Estudio De La Imitación Literaria En Bernat Metge, Bernat Hug De Rocabertí Y Joan Roís De Corella, Pau Cañigueral Batllosera

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation studies the impact of the works by Giovanni Boccaccio on Catalan medieval literature. The influence of Italian literature in medieval Iberian writing is traditionally understood as a key component of a wide-ranging cultural process of transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. The works of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, the tre corone, played a crucial role in that process. Boccaccio, in particular, became a model for the writing of a variety of literary genres, from misogynistic poetry to chivalric romances. His works, both in Latin and Italian, featured in the most remarkable libraries of the period …