Medieval Studies Commons^™

Mapping Narrations, Narrating Maps: Concepts Of The World In The Middle Ages And The Early Modern Period, Ingrid Baumgartner, Daniel Gneckow, Anna Hollenbach, Phillip Landgrebe

Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

This volume offers the author's central articles on the medieval and early modern history of cartography for the first time in English translation. A first group of essays gives an overview of medieval cartography and illustrates the methods of cartographers. Another analyzes world maps and travel accounts in relation to mapped spaces. A third examines land surveying, cartographical practices of exploration and the production of Portolan atlases.

57th International Congress On Medieval Studies, Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University

International Congress on Medieval Studies Archive

The printed program of the 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies (live on the internet May 9–14, 2022), together with the Corrigenda.

"Hail To The King[S], Baby" Arthur Vs Army Of Darkness, Jeff Massey Ph.D., Tabitha Ochtera Mlis, Mba

English: Faculty Publications

Given the current penchant for “medieval misappropriation” among white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and political pundits, medievalists are clearly justified in directing their critical attention toward debunking the overly popular neomedieval misrepresentations portrayed in so much serious modern Arthuriana. Yet, it is worth remembering that comedy also played an essential role in medieval Arthurian storytelling, and that neomedieval comic representations of King Arthur (and his silly English kuh-nigguts) remain worthy of critical attention as well, perhaps especially so during times of modern “darkness.” Two major strains of neomedieval Arthurian comedy remain perennially present in modern media: those following Mark Twain’s time-traveling Connecticut …

The Cosmic Catastrophe Of History: Patristic Angelology And Augustinian Theology Of History In Tolkien's "Long Defeat", Edmund M. Lazzari

Journal of Tolkien Research

Much of the poignancy of J.R.R. Tolkien's literary universe comes from its atmosphere of tragedy. The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings take place in a universe where noble and heroic actions are most often small candles lit against the inexorable march of evil. This backdrop of tragedy, which Galadriel names "the long defeat," is certainly influenced by Tolkien's views of Germanic mythologies, but it also draws much from the medieval notions of evil in Patristic Angelology and St. Augustine's theology of human history. These twin understandings of evil ultimately lead to one conclusion in Tolkien: the need for …

Meet Me In The Middle Ages: Engaging With Fantasy, Reality, And Collaborative World-Building, Amanda Greene

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This critical essay accompanies and describes my thesis project, Medievalia Miscellany, a magazine for middle-grade readers which explores the world of medieval fantasy through art, comics, stories, and activities. Throughout the essay, I use my own term “archaeological upcycling” to discuss and explore a variety of relationships between ideas of parts and a whole. I then use it to characterize the way stories are created out of many different parts and how these parts help a reader to relate to both the world of the story and the world in which they live. I describe the genre of medieval fantasy …

Dynamics Of Secrecy In The Sworn Book Of Honorius, Connor Feliu

Theses - ALL

This thesis seeks to examine the cultural activity and discourse of the logics of medieval clerical magical secrecy and investigate how these covert logics become textualized in the Sworn Book of Honorius. In order to perform this examination of medieval clerical magical secrecy, this thesis extends the methodologies of engaging with medieval secrecy that Karma Lochrie establishes in her Covert Operations: The Medieval Uses of Secrecy. I primarily draw from two aspects of her methodological work: the focus on the dynamics of secrecy as opposed to the secret itself, and the attention to the relationship between magical knowledge and power.

The Contribution Of The Peoples Of Mawarannahr To The Islamic Sciences And Culture, Shuxrat Yovqochev

The Light of Islam

The study of the heritage and works of the great ancestors who lived on the territory of Mawarannahr, who made a significant contribution to the development of Islamic sciences and culture is seen as one of the fundamental points in the self-identification of young independent states in the post-Soviet period. These works not only can help in the education of the younger rising generation but also serve as an excellent factual and practical material for confronting religious radicalism. The purpose of the article is to show how rich is the legacy of the great scientists of Mawarannahr. It can be …

Margery Kempe’S Mysticism In The Context Of Late Medieval English Spirituality, Beata A. Butryn

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the complexities in the mysticism and literary authority of Margery Kempe as the author of her book. I consider Margery’s struggles for the acceptance of her devotion to Christ in her status as a laywoman in the context of late medieval English spirituality to challenge medieval misogyny.

A Mind Of Her Own: Women's Interiority In The Middle English And Older Scots Pastourelles, Anne L. Klinck

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

The pastourelle achieved what might be called its classic form in Middle French poetry of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: a mini-narrative in which the narrator, a knight or clerk, tells how he tried to have his will with a lower-class girl he happened upon while riding in the country. He greets her, sweet-talks her, and propositions her; she protests vigorously. Sometimes the debate ends here. Otherwise, her accoster overcomes her resistance by guile or force, and sexually assails her. The tone is light-hearted and cynical, the action crude. To modern readers, this narrative may be mildly amusing, rather tedious, …

Alchemy, The Liber Aureus, And The Erotics Of Knowledge, Kersti Francis

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Medieval alchemy was an overwhelmingly masculine practice, and its instruction books reflect the exclusivity of its practitioners. This article examines the use of secrecy and masculine discourse in a sixteenth-century Latin alchemical handbook, the Liber aureus, to demonstrate that there exists an erotically charged tension between authors and their readers. Alchemical instruction books like the Liber aureus draw upon this tension in the service of a particular kind of gatekeeping that creates hierarchies of both knowledge and alchemical practitioners. By investigating secrecy and its provocative effects both within and beyond this manuscript, I argue that alchemical instruction books’ secretive …

Calkas’S Daughter: Paternal Authority And Feminine Virtue In Troilus And Criseyde, Jennifer Alberghini

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

The heroine of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde has been of considerable interest to medieval feminist scholars as a woman who is depicted as both virtuous and an adulteress. Yet critical discussions do not often view Criseyde’s virtue in light of her role as daughter. This article explores that role, focusing on how her father Calkas is described by the characters as having authority over his daughter’s body in the marriage market. This will later enable them to use him as an excuse for Criseyde’s failure to return to Troy and thus preserve her status as virtuous. However, the characters …

Affect And The Tomb In Robert Henryson's Testament Of Cresseid, Elizabeth Elliott

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

The penultimate verse of Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid suggests the possibility that Troilus raised a monument in memory of his former love, Cresseid: “Sum said he maid ane tomb of merbell gray” (l. 603). Examining the political implications of this uncertain act of memorialisation, this article considers how Henryson's poem mobilises the reader's emotional response to constitute Cresseid as a mourned subject, whose subjectivity is recognised only insofar as it is limited to suffering and death. In doing so, the Testament also establishes a subjectivity for women that offers conditional tolerance predicated on respectable behaviour, contributing to the historical production …

The Whale-Road To Road House: A Study Of The Contemporary Transmission Of Beowulf, Haley Grindstaff

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores three versions of Beowulf: Gareth Hinds’s graphic novel Beowulf (2007), Maria Dahvana Headley’s translation Beowulf (2020), and Rowdy Herrington’s film Road House (1989). While Hinds and Headley fail to convey Beowulf as a cultural elegy by subtracting or misrepresenting significant scenes and characters, Road House superimposes the story of Beowulf onto 1980s America. Parallels between the plots of Beowulf and Road House and Road House’s interaction with the political underpinnings of the 80s (such as Reaganomics and the AIDS epidemic) make the film one of the best at capturing the elements of cultural elegy in the …

Dies Legibiles Ii

Dies Legibiles

We are proud to present to the public the second edition of Dies Legibiles, Smith’s very own undergraduate journal of Medieval Studies! After the initial success we had in receiving submissions for last year’s edition, we were naturally worried that the journal might experience a lull–but this was, wonderfully, far from the case! Our submissions this year were numerous, and explore a number of extraordinarily unique and important topics.

Definitions And Depictions Of Rhetorical Practice In Medieval English Fürstenspiegel., Joseph Ethan Blaine Sharp

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how medieval authors defined rhetoric and depicted rhetorical practice in medieval English Fürstenspiegel. It begins by analyzing how the field of medieval rhetorical historiography has overlooked the Fürstenspiegel as a rhetorical genre due to its overt reliance on meta-rhetorical handbook genres as the objects of its analysis. This dissertation challenges traditional narratives that positions medieval rhetoric as a primarily academic discipline divorced from political practice by engaging in horizontal reading practices that examine the broader culture of medieval rhetorical practice alongside the definitions of rhetoric found in medieval English Fürstenspiegel. In so doing, this dissertation …

Unearthing The Witch: Reckoning With Gender, Magic, And The Unusual Dead Within Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burials, Samantha Melvin

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

The fifth to seventh centuries CE, or the Migration Period, marked the development of Anglo-Saxon culture and society in England. The early Anglo-Saxons are known largely through their material culture and mortuary practices, left behind in medieval cemeteries that twist their way across the English landscape. The remains of early Anglo-Saxons tell rich and interesting histories about past peoples, but within the broader landscapes of these cemeteries are deviant burials. These are burials that are specifically typified as ones that ‘deviate’ from the norm, usually indicating that the inhumed individual was punished in death for actions committed in life. These …

Imperator Novus: Charting The Transfer Of Rome’S Imperial Past To The Papacy’S Eighth Century Present, Henry R. Elsenpeter

Classical Mediterranean and Middle East Honors Projects

When did Roman imperial iconography become part of the position of pope? This thesis will highlight the eighth century as a time of notable change in papal authority and identity. The developing papacy — in competition with rival contenders for Rome’s past — produced two key documents that portrayed the pope as an inheritor of the Roman Empire. In these sources, the bishop of Rome took on an entirely new identity as an imperator novus. While the eighth century continued, the pope gradually appeared increasingly imperial, concluding with a coronation that crowned emperor and pope, alike.

Reimagining History Dataset 3.0, Michelle R. Warren, Neil Weijer

Other Faculty Materials

The Middle English prose Brut chronicle survives in nearly two hundred manuscripts. This corpus has been the subject of extensive study for more than a hundred years. The most recent research, however, has turned out to be the most fragile. In 2017, the multiyear digital humanities project “Imaging History: Perspectives on Late Medieval Vernacular Historiography” disappeared from the live Internet, only a decade after its publication. Shortly afterwards, we began a project called "Re-Imagining History"--to create a new dataset of information about the Brut manuscript corpus and learn how digital infrastructure might shape the production and preservation of historical data. …

Res Historica, Volume 1, Lynneth Miller Renberg Phd, Alpha Rho Epsilon Phi Alpha Theta

Res Historica

The inaugural journal of historical research by Anderson University students, Res Historica.

The editorial team for this edition of Res Historica was Dr. Lynneth Miller Renberg, Hunter Curlee, and Johnathan Sorce. Cover art for this volume is the Phi Alpha Theta: Alpha Rho Epsilon logo created by Dr. Lynneth Miller Renberg.

Sterner Stuff; Sansa Stark And The System Of Gothic Fantasy, Joseph R. Young

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

Contests the suggestion that Sansa Stark, a character in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, is a weak and indecisive by analyzing her in relation to William Patrick Day’s system of Gothic fantasy. While Sansa is indeed physically passive, she manages to retain her own identity in a challenging literary environment. This physical passivity allows her to assert herself intellectually, analyzing and indicting the misdeeds and abuses she suffers. This combination of passive and active attributes precisely instantiates the skill set of the detective, a species of literary being developed from the Gothic fantasies Day analyses, and …