Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Valiant Welshman, The Scottish James, And The Formation Of Great Britain, Megan Lloyd

Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

When James VI of Scotland and I of England proclaimed himself King of Great Britain, he proposed a merger of the English and Scottish parliaments, and he looked to Henry VIII’s Acts of Union of England and Wales (1536/43) as an example for English Scottish union under one king. On the London stage after 1603 many plays paid tribute to the new king and provided a predominantly English audience a means of accepting the not so palatable ideas of Scottish power, assimilation and unity. The Valiant Welshman is distinctive among these works, as no other extant early modern English drama …

The Dark And Middle Ages, Edward Jayne

English Faculty Publications

For the most part only Plato's teachings supported by a limited version of Aristotelian cosmology supportive of Platonism survived the decline of ancient Greek philosophy during the Roman Empire. Christianity later prevailed, and toward the end of the Middle Ages Aristotle’s secular perspective was only taken into account by Arab philosophers such as Averroes and Avicenna. After the collapse of Arab civilization during the twelfth century, the secular concept of a double truth between belief and reason put philosophy on equal footing with religion in such universities as Cordoba and the University of Paris. After a large assortment of ancient …

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 …

Front Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.54, No.1, Summer 2018

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Back Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.54, No.1, Summer 2018

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Passion Through Slander: Saintliness, Deviance, And Suffering By Speech In The Book Of Margery Kempe, Connor Yeck

The Hilltop Review

A late medieval mystic prone to violent bouts of sobbing, Margery Kempe suffers a range of verbal abuse in her titular text, ranging from simple rumors, to outright accusations of heresy and possession. While we might accept such accusatory speech as indicative of the era and Margery’s controversial role as a public “holy woman,” further investigation reveals a narrative strongly driven by the notion of “suffering by slander,” and the weight attributed to the spoken word. The Book of Margery Kempe shows us an oral culture filled with “deviant speech,” and within its own rhetorical construction as a text, elevates …

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 …

Chinese Propaganda And The People’S Republic In The Twentieth Century, Christopher E. Maiytt

The Hilltop Review

This paper is an examination of the development of propaganda in twentieth century China; Mao Zedong and the People Republic of China utilized images that called up cultural and economic ideas to propagate Communist thought. Propaganda imagery uniquely was able to motive mass rural support, allowing the People’s Republic to come to power, but the reason for its effectiveness in China and it’s continuous utilization in the modern day is worthy of a deeper exploration. Beginning with the Long March, the assessment of the topic moves into the revolving Party sanctioned economic campaigns and the role propaganda played to control …

Not A Conclusion To Gender And Species, Ecofeminist Intersections, Lesley Kordecki

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Does It Have To Be About Women?, Carolynn Van Dyke

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

The six essays on medieval texts in the "Gender and Species" cluster (or Special Issue) demonstrate the power of combining feminist analysis with critical animal studies.

La Femme Bisclavret: The Female Of The Species?, Alison Langdon

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Conventional humanist readings of Bisclavret approach the lai from an anthropocentric perspective, in which animal nature is merely an allegory for human nature. In such a reading, the werewolf protagonist is a foil for his much more beastly if wholly human wife, with the underlying assumption being that animal nature is something to be rejected. That the marker of Lady Bisclavret's bestial nature—her noselessness—is transmitted through the generations of only female descendants seems to echo medieval antifeminist truisms about female perfidy. However, approaching the lai from a critical animal studies perspective can help dismantle conventional assumptions about the privileged status …

Questioning Gynocentric Utopia: Nature As Addict In “Description Of Cookeham”, Liberty S. Stanavage

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

In her 1610 “The Description of Cookeham,” Amelia Lanyer presents Cookeham as a space in which women and nature exist in poetry-inducing harmony until the intervention of man. Lanyer’s poem highlights the deference of both the animals (who “sport . . . in her eye” and “attend”), and the landscape to Clifford: the hills “descend” to meet her footstep and then raise themselves again at her whim. This alignment frequently leads critics to describe Cookeham as a utopian feminist landscape that aligns women and nature against an antagonistic masculine influence.

However, this utopian vision dramatizes a landscape that is not …

Belligerent Mothers And The Power Of Feminine Speech In _The Owl And The Nightingale_, Wendy A. Matlock

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

The Middle English poem The Owl and the Nightingale famously records the dispute between a hostile Nightingale and a bellicose Owl. Within that dialogue the birds reproduce themselves in word and egg, in rhetoric and body. Their digressions on bodies and scatology and on childbearing and childrearing become fertilizer that expands maternal authority into public, intellectual discourse. In addition to calling forth their own communicative powers, both characters aggressively recount narratives best known from the work of Marie de France, a voice feminist scholars have successfully restored to the canon, to condemn their foe. In this light, I argue, The …

Women And Other Beasts: A Feminist Perspective On Medieval Bestiaries, Carolynn Van Dyke

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Gender and species intersect in the subject-matter, readership, and authorship of medieval beast-books. First, androcentric norms result in inconsistent gender references to species: the grammatically feminine eagle (Aquila) is represented as a stern father, the masculine turtledove (Turtura) as a clinging wife. More broadly, male exemplars represent nearly all species regardless of grammatical gender.

Second, both discursive norms and bibliographic practice presumed an exclusively male readership for the bestiary, but external and internal evidence suggest that bourgeois mothers used bestiaries in educating their children.

Third, a more radical intervention in androcentric bestiary norms is an instance …

Students And Digital Projects At Wmu: Working And Learning Together, Marianne Swierenga

University Libraries Faculty & Staff Presentations

Western Michigan University Libraries uses undergraduate and graduate students in many stages of their digital projects, from finding aid creation and translation, to scanning and editing digital images. Using the recent digitization and description of a WWI German soldier’s scrapbook, we will examine how students are incorporated into the overall workflow, often bringing needed skills to the project and gaining valuable hands-on experience with archival materials, scanning equipment and software, and metadata creation.

Witches And Pagans: Women In European Folk Religion, 700-1100, Melissa Ridley Elmes

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Joan, The Fair Maid Of Kent, Samantha Katz Seal

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

The Pleasant Nights, Sally A. Livingston

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Back Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.53, No.2 2018

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

“Ubi Et Est Habitatio Sororum Et Mansio Fratrum”: Doppelklöster Und Ähnliche Klostergemeinschaften Im Mittelalterichen Österreich (Diözese Passau In Den Ausdehnungen Des 13. Jahrhunderts), Lucy Barnhouse

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Clare Of Assisi And The Thirteenth-Century Church: Religious Women, Rules, And Resistance, Mary Anne Gonzales

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Front Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.53, No.2 2018

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Simon De Montfort Et Le Gouvernement : Statut Des Femmes Dans Les Statuts De Pamiers (Art. 46) Avant La Magna Carta, Marjolaine Raguin-Barthelmebs

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Promulgated at Pamiers (Languedoc, France), 1^stDecember 1212 by Simon de Montfort after its first great victory during the Albigensian Crusade, those Statutes (juridical texts) are known as the introductory act for the Coutume of Paris in Languedoc, and more specifically regarding heirs rights. Redacted for the administration of newly conquest territories, the establishment of peace and to promote catholic faith against heresy and Languedocians owners of the land, theses Statutes dispose on women in their three final articles. More particularly, the article 46 concerns nobles and heirs women and decides, thanks to matrimony institution, who (and how) they …

Empress Adelheid And Countess Matilda: Medieval Female Rulership And The Foundation Of European Society, Constance H. Berman

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Medicine Beyond Doctors: Aphrodisiac Recipes In Tenth-Century Medicine And Cuisine, Shireen Hamza

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Reading The Bible In The Middle Ages, Catherine S. Cox

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

England In Europe: English Royal Women And Literary Patronage, C.1000–C.1150,, Mary Dockray-Miller

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Defiant Priests: Domestic Unions, Violence, And Clerical Masculinity In Fourteenth-Century Catalunya, G. Geltner

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.