Medieval Studies Commons^™

Prophecy, Emanation, And The Mediterranean Middle Ages, Alberto Gelmi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the notion of prophecy as a semiotic construct in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam on a chronological span that runs from Late Antiquity to the 14^th century. It argues that theories of prophecy offer useful insights in the domain of rhetoric and not just in epistemology, as scholarship has predominantly contended. The first two chapters survey the trendsetting work of Augustine, al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Maimonides, arguing that their semiotic angle on prophecy depends on a structural affinity with the metaphysical template of emanationism as formulated by Plotinus and Proclus, whose teachings went often misrepresented or …

Thinking Queerly: Medievalism, Wizardry, And Neurodiversity In Young Adult Texts, Jes Battis

Premodern Transgressive Literatures

Why do we love wizards? Where do these magical figures come from? Thinking Queerly traces the wizard from medieval Arthurian literature to contemporary YA adaptations. By exploring the link between Merlin and Harry Potter, or Morgan la Fey and Sabrina, readers will see how the wizard offers spaces of hope and transformation for young readers. In particular, this book examines how wizards think differently, and how this difference can resonate with both LGBTQ and neurodivergent readers, who’ve been told they don’t fit in.

J.R.R. Tolkien's "Homecoming" And Modern Alliterative Metre, Anna Smol, Rebecca Foster

Journal of Tolkien Research

J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son” is a modern English alliterative verse drama written in the metre of Old English poetry and demonstrating his interest in versification and his skill in writing original alliterative verse in new and versatile ways. Tolkien’s originality also lies in his use of alliterative metre in a play, a genre not written by the early English; in fact, “The Homecoming” is Tolkien’s only published drama as well as historical fiction. While Tolkien bases this work on historical events recounted in the Old English poem “The Battle of Maldon,” he also uses his drama …

Civil Disobedience From A Biblical Perspective, Gabriel Reed

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

To say that civil disobedience is a complicated topic is to severely understate the topic. It is a subject matter that has derived many different and disparate opinions, points of view, and public policies. Specifically, within America today, we observe calls for civil disobedience from both sides of the political spectrum, over several divergent political ideals. These issues are, primarily, driven from both sides’ desire to provide protection and provision for the oppressed and those who cannot necessarily speak for themselves. The definition of who is necessarily oppressed and whom their oppressors are varies from person to person, regardless of …

The Humanity Of Christ As Instrument Of Salvation In The Theology Of Thomas Aquinas, J. David Moser

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

Interpreters of Thomas Aquinas’s Christology have long observed the uniqueness of his claim that Christ’s human nature is “an instrument of the divinity.” For Aquinas, the mysteries of Christ’s life, the actions and sufferings he underwent in the flesh (acta et passa Christi in carne), cause our salvation in the present. And they have this effect because Christ’s humanity is a “conjoined instrument” of the divinity, united to the Logos, the second person of the Trinity, in person. By contrast, nearly all of Aquinas’s medieval contemporaries, like Bonaventure (1224-1274) as well as Aquinas himself, argued that the humanity …

Love With Excuse: Contextualizing Themes In Adaptations Of The Legend Of Tristan And Isolde, Lillianna Wright

Senior Honors Theses

The legend of Tristan and Isolde is perhaps the most influential Arthurian romance apart from Lancelot and Guinevere. It has been retold many times, with each iteration responding to its own unique cultural context as well as adopting varying approaches to the medieval traditions of courtly love. The works of Wagner, Malory, and Gottfried von Strassburg all develop different versions of the same three themes: sexuality, the worthiness of love, and death. These various reconstructions of Tristan and Isolde's story blend syntheses of courtly love and historically contemporary approaches to romance, but all three reinventions romanticize it; while Strassburg and …

56th International Congress On Medieval Studies, Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University

International Congress on Medieval Studies Archive

The printed program of the 56th International Congress on Medieval Studies (live on the internet May 10-15, 2021), together with the Corrigenda.

Cisterician And Monastic Studies 2021 Conference, The Center For Cistercian And Monastic Studies

Conference on Cistercian Studies Programs

A program for the Cistercian and Monastic Studies in conjunction with the 55th International Congress on Medieval Studies. This conference happened on May 3-7, 2021.

Dies Legibiles I

Dies Legibiles

Welcome to the inaugural edition of the Dies Legibiles Undergraduate Journal of Medieval Studies! We are thrilled to share this work with you. During our undergraduate careers in medieval studies, we have been able to read, think, and learn about such varied aspects of the medieval world as religion, science, art, and history. But too often those breakthroughs, thoughts, and conversations remain confined to the classroom and the semester. Our hope is that through this journal, undergraduates from any institution can begin to see that their explorations need not be confined to a grading stack or to a final paper, …

The Failure Of Chivalry, Courtesy, And Knighthood Post-Wwi As Represented In David Jones’S In Parenthesis, Taylor L. Hubbard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes David Jones’s In Parenthesis to demonstrate the failed notion of chivalry, courtesy, and knighthood in modernity during and after the war. Jones’s semi-autobiographical prose poem recounting his experiences of WWI was published in 1937, nineteen years after the war ended. Jones applied the concepts of chivalry, courtesy, and knighthood to his experiences during WWI through In Parenthesis. Jones used these concepts, which originated in the classical period and the Middle Ages, to demonstrate how they have changed over time, especially given the events of WWI. The best way for Jones to demonstrate the impact of WWI …

Representations Of Female Agency In Medieval French Literature, Mathilde Pointiere

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the different ways authors portray female agency in medieval French literature. In focusing on three medieval writers, Chrétien de Troyes, Heldris de Cornouailles and Christine de Pizan, I contend that female agency arises as a result of trauma or crisis. I define my terms as follows: agency is the capacity and intention of performing actions on one’s own behalf. For a fictional character to have agency, therefore, she must be portrayed as having a sense of control and of being the owner of the action she executes. Additionally, I argue that as women characters assume their agency, …

Mapping Manuscript Migrations: Building And Using A Linked Open Data Environment For Medieval And Renaissance Manuscript Studies, Lynn Ransom, Toby Burrows

Digital Initiatives Symposium

“Mapping Manuscript Migrations” is a digital humanities project that brings together three distinct data sets about the histories of more than 215,000 medieval and Renaissance manuscripts for browsing, searching, and visualization. Four leading institutions from Great Britain, France, Finland, and the United States collaborated on this project, pooling their expertise in Semantic Web technologies and medieval manuscript curation and research, as well as contributing their own data from the three contrasting datasets. The Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania, the Medieval Manuscripts Catalogue at the University of Oxford, and the Bibale database from the Institut de recherche …

As Above, So Below: Italian Amuletic Practices Following The Black Death, Danielle Pigeon

Art History Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the production of amuletic rings in the Italian peninsula following the arrival of Yersinia pestis during the mid-fourteenth century. By examining patterns of ornamentation on a selection of Italian rings, I establish connections to the trauma experienced by individuals left in the wake of the plague and argue that these objects offered a sacralized model of protective adornment to counteract the threat of a fatal and seemingly unstoppable illness. Italian amuletic rings can thereby be read as a material response to the anxieties of mass death and bodily horrors that accompanied outbreaks of the Black Death.

The …

Re-Imagining Digital Things: Sustainable Data In Medieval Manuscript Studies, Michelle R. Warren, Neil Weijer

Dartmouth Scholarship

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. We describe the website’s lifecycle as well as our progress so far in creating a new dataset for the Brut corpus, “Re-Imagining History,” part of the ongoing project “Remix the Manuscript: A Chronicle of …

Uprooting Medievalism: Ya And The Future Of Fantasy, Zoe Phillips

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

This thesis looks at the development of the young adult neo-medieval fantasy genre, measuring famous works from the Medieval period against works such as Tolkien's, to examine the impact of female protagonists and female authors on the genre and readers alike as neo-medieval fantasy continues to gain in popularity. Works examined include: Beowulf, Lanval, Le Roman de Silence, The Hobbit, Uprooted, and The Hero and the Crown.

“Writing History, Writing Trauma” : The Rape Of Igerna In The Medieval Brut Narratives, Gillian Adler

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

In the Brut narratives of medieval historiography, male heroic success and specifically the birth of Arthur are predicated upon the rape of Igerna. A comparative approach to the Tintagel episode across several of these narratives reveals how the emphasis on romance, magic, and nation-building function to validate sexual assault and elide Igerna’s experience. Ultimately, the repetition entailed in translatio studii, specifically the transfer that takes place within history-writing, reinforces the silencing of the survivor’s voice. This repetition lends trauma to the reading experience or creates the risk that readers become inured to the rape.

13 Musical Instruments In Early Drama: Tudor Plays, Mary Remnant

Early Drama, Art, and Music

A study of musical instruments in early Tudor plays that serves as a supplement to the author's "Musical Instruments in Early English Drama"; published in Material Culture and Medieval Drama (1999).

12 St. Martin's Clowns: The Miracle Of The Blind Man And The Cripple In Art And Drama, Martin W. Walsh

Early Drama, Art, and Music

A reprint, with revisions, of a study of the miracle of the healing of a pair of beggars by St. Martin, originally published in Early Drama, Art, and Music Review 17, no. 1 (Fall 1994).

Hanna (Ed.), Richard Rolle: Unprinted Latin Writings, Ian Cornelius

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

14 Drama And Authority During The Reign Of Queen Mary, Peter Happé

Early Drama, Art, and Music

An otherwise unpublished study of drama and the English regime in the reign of Mary Tudor.