Medieval Studies Commons^™

History Department Annual Student Awards

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Each year, in conjunction with the Swenson lecture, the History department conducts an awards banquet. Student papers are reviewed by a faculty committee and the best are chosen for awards. We at the Thetean feel a need to recognize these students for their achievements. Below are listed the winners for the 1997-98 History student paper awards.

When Girl Meets Boy, Robbyn Thompson Scribner

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Young women in traditional Russian peasant society had little, if any, choice about whom they married. The choice of a spouse was most often made by the father, although occasionally the mother would also have a say in the decision. Olga, a character in Goncharov's Oblomov, says of young women, "We do not marry, but we are given in marriage." The tradition that women had relatively little say in the matter is further highlighted by traditional folk lyrics young betrothed girls would sing, such as: "I've been given away" and "They are making me marry a lout." Laments such as …

Gettin' By, Kam Brian

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Utah was severely affected by the Great Depression of the 1930's. Unemployment soared and thousands were forced to turn to the government for assistance. Yet, Wayne county, a small area in south central Utah was able to escape many of the devastating effects brought on by the failing economy. The residents of this isolated county eluded much of the despair and disillusionment felt throughout the country at this time. Alta Albrecht, a life-long resident of Wayne County, recalls the period like this, "People didn't have much, they didn't know the difference. They didn't expect much, but they were happy people."

The Provocation Of A Few, Ben Mack

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

For the Mormons in Missouri, the year 1838 presented many trials. They were in the midst of an attempt to establish "Zion," a community that would be "of one heart and of one mind," but there were obstacles to such an endeavor. Tension between the established Missourians and the Mormon settlers escalated throughout the summer. At the end of the year, the bitterness exploded into a devastating outburst of Missouri violence referred to as the "Haun's Mill Massacre." Of the victimized Mormons, or Latter-day Saints (LDS), seventeen were killed and thirteen were wounded. The massacre, though undeserved by the Mormons, …

Judaism Transformed, Kyrenia Palmer

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

The Sabbatean movement, Judaism's first true heresy, originated in the Ottoman province of Palestine in the 1660s. The movement centered around an aspiring Messiah called Sabbatai Sevi. With the aid of a personal prophet, young Nathan of Gaza,· this man made himself a household word throughout the Jewish Diaspora and induced thousands of Jews to inflict radical penitential sufferings upon themselves in a sort of apocalyptic ecstacy. However, Sabbatai Sevi was not the decisive factor in Judaism's spiritual awakening, nor was Nathan of Gaza ( though without his support the movement never would have spread). Rather, the great messianic revival …

Power For A Purpose, Robert L. Beisner

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

The dawn of modern American strategy appeared during the early cold war a half century ago. Strategy is the use of power for a purpose. Washington's purposes after 1945 were to establish and then maintain an international order in which American values and institutions could prosper. American policymakers thought the same policies established to do this would also benefit the world at large. Their conscious fashioning of strategy to achieve purpose was virtually unprecedented in American history. The results, almost all successes, included the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, the Truman Doctrine and Berlin Airlift, the Marshall Plan, the …

The Russel B. Swensen Lecture

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

After graduating from Brigham Young University in 1926, Russel B. Swensen ( 1902-1987) taught seminary in Mesa, Arizona, and later in Kamas and Hurricane, Utah. In 1930, Joseph E Merrill, then LDS Church commissioner of education, invited Swensen, along with two others, to attend the University of Chicago Divinity School. There he received an M.A. and Ph.D. in New Testament Studies.

Preface, Bruce W. Hall

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

As the official journal of the Beta Iota Chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the honors society for students of history, The Thetean is committed to encouraging good historical writing at BYU. We recognize the great importance of quality historical writing and have sought to recognize those students whose outstanding work has earned them a recognition greater than just a grade.

Front Matter

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

Poets And Scribes In Late Medieval England: Essays On Manuscripts And Meaning In Honor Of Susanna Fein, Michael Johnston, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Derek Pearsall

Festschriften, Occasional Papers, and Lectures

This collection of essays, inspired by Susanna Fein’s remarkable breadth and range, reflects upon her deep commitment to unpacking how we can use manuscript evidence to recover the voices of medieval poets in their original reading environments. Drawing upon her critical insights, this volume gathers contributions from scholars whose own research is indebted to Fein’s enduring contributions. From seasoned veterans of Middle English studies to mid-career scholars to emerging voices within the field, this book brings together essays by eleven scholars indebted to Fein’s work, ranging across Middle English manuscripts, lyrics, Chaucer, Pearl, devotional poetry, scribal culture, multilingualism, gender, …

Prosodic Protocols And Interruptions Of Them In Piers Plowman, Ian Cornelius

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

In premodern societies artificial prosody supplied an encoding protocol for the transmission of sound in writing. Focusing on the fourteenth-century English poem Piers Plowman, this essay examines mid-stream interruption, modification, or blending of prosodic protocols. In most cases the interruption takes the form of a mid-line switch from English verse to Latin prose. In a few cases, the switch is from English verse to Latin verse. These interruptions of protocol are part of the formal artistry and multilingual facility of Piers Plowman, encoding a great range of sound and some silence. They prompt readers to re-evaluate well-justified expectations …

The Dragon Is Not An Allegory: Reading Tolkien’S Monsters In Medieval Contexts, Cait Coker, Ruthann Mowry

Journal of Tolkien Research

In his letters, J.R.R. Tolkien stated both that he considered LOTR “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work” (no. 172) but that he considered the work “built on or out of certain ‘religious’ ideas, but is not an allegory of them (or anything else)” (no. 283). However, Tolkien was also a medievalist, and understood that texts always contained a multitude of readings as documentary objects that were kept and used in specific ways. Creatures and imagery contained in medieval books provided
information to the reader, as when bestiaries explicate fauna with attributes both real and metaphysical. They thus combine fiction and …

Tolkien's Tevildo - Of Fables, Rings And Cats, Polina Svadkovskaia

Journal of Tolkien Research

The article explores Tolkien's process of deconstructing two medieval beast fable narratives in his creation of Tevildo, Prince of Cats, whereby he strategically aligns the feline with malevolence. It further posits that the magic of the One Ring is presented preliminarily in The Tale of Tinúviel in two forms: Tevildo's golden collar and the enchantment he uses to control other cats. Tevildo is thus endowed with tokens of villainy reminiscent of Sauron's: however, the cat fails at projecting fear due to the underlying moralistic element of the story and the fragmentation of the magic his power relies upon.

Sam's Song In The Tower: The Significance Of 'Merry Finches' In J.R.R. Tolkien's _Lord Of The Rings_, Jane Beal Phd

Journal of Tolkien Research

In The Lord of the Rings, Samwise Gamgee climbs the Tower of Cirith Ungol to try to rescue his master and friend, Frodo Baggins, who has been taken captive by Orcs. When Sam is near despair because he cannot find Frodo, Sam sings a song that makes reference to “merry finches.” What is the significance of this phrase in his lyrics? To answer this question, my essay first explores J.R.R. Tolkien’s ornithological knowledge, especially of finches in England, which is readily demonstrated from a letter he wrote to his son, Christopher Tolkien (July 7, 1944), about his observations of bullfinches …

Æthelflæd, Lady Of The Mercians, And Women In Tenth-Century England, Rebecca Hardie

Richard Rawlinson Center Series

Æthelflæd (ca. 870–918), political leader, military strategist, and administrator of law, is one of the most important ruling women in English history. Despite her multifaceted roles and family legacy, however, her reign and relationship with other women in tenth-century England have never been the subject of a book-length study. This interdisciplinary collection of essays redresses a notable hiatus in scholarship of early medieval England. Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, and Women in Tenth-Century England argues for a reassessment of women’s political, military, literary, and domestic agency. It invites deeper reflection on the female kinships, networks, and communities that give meaning …

The Medieval North And Its Afterlife: Essays In Honor Of Heather O’Donoghue, Siân Grønlie, Carl Phelpstead

Northern Medieval World

This book showcases the variety and vitality of contemporary scholarship on Old Norse and related medieval literatures and their modern afterlives. The contents of the volume reflect the range of current research on Old Norse and related literatures, featuring original work on Old Norse poetry and saga; related languages and literatures of medieval north-western Europe; and accounts of the afterlife of Old Norse in modern English literature.

Otherworldly But Not The Otherworld: Tolkien’S Adaptation Of Medieval Faerie And Fairies Into A Sub-Creative Elvendom, Elliott Thomas Collins

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

Through a comparative analysis of Lothlorien and the medieval stories of Lanval and Sir Orfeo, this article attempts to shed some light on how the inherently pessimistic and recursive nature of Tolkien's sub-creation affects his adaptation of medieval Faerie into a sub-creative elvendom born of the creative instincts of the elves. In doing so, the article also questions Tolkien's adherence to parameters of Faerie and characteristics of elves as laid out in OFS.

Medieval Manuscripts At Loyola University Chicago, Ian Cornelius, Kathy Young

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article provides a summary overview of the collection of pre-1600 western European manuscripts in Loyola University Chicago Archives and Special Collections. The collection presently comprises four manuscript codices, at least 38 fragments, and four documents. The codices are a thirteenth-century Book of Hours from German-speaking lands; a fifteenth-century Dutch prayerbook; a preacher’s compilation written probably in southern Germany in the 1440s; and two fifteenth-century Italian humanist booklets, bound together since the nineteenth century, transmitting Donatus’s commentary on the Eunuchus (incomplete) and an anthology of theological excerpts, respectively. The fragments consist of thirteen leaves from books dismembered by modern booksellers …

Il Digiuno Delle Donne Religioso Durante Il Rinascimento, Alessia Nicosia

Italian Renaissance Foodways

Mio advanced integration project è trovare la connessione tra religione e la cultura italiana. Il digiuno ha una relazione per dimostrare la dedizione a Dio, le donne religiosi avevano. Può vedere la intersezione tra religione e cultura con i libri di Laura Giannetti, Caroline Bynum, e Rudolph Bell, per scoprire l'identità italiana e la spiritualità di queste donne religiosi (in particolare Caterina di Benincasa (Catherine of Siena), Beata Colomba di Rieti (olumba of Rieti) e Santa Clare of Assisi) il ruolo il cibo aveva con loro, per esempio nel il digiuno e la eucaristia.

Manuscripts In The University Of Dayton's Marian Library: An Overview And Recent Activities, Henry M. Handley

Marian Library Faculty Publications

For researchers seeking information on the Virgin Mary, the Marian Library at the University of Dayton is a treasure trove. The library, a special collection dedicated to Mary, the mother of Jesus, serves students, faculty, and staff at the Catholic university as well as researchers from around the world. For researchers beyond the university looking for European medieval manuscripts, though, the Marian Library might not seem like the first place to look.

The library's collecting scope and eighty-year history of antiquarian acquisitions, however, have supported the acquisition of several manuscript codices and a number of fragments. Recent rediscoveries and library …