Medieval Studies Commons^™

The Shapes Of Early English Poetry: Style, Form, History, Eric Weiskott, Irina Dumitrescu

Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

This volume contributes to the study of early English poetics. In these essays, several related approaches and fields of study radiate outward from poetics, including stylistics, literary history, word studies, gender studies, metrics, and textual criticism. By combining and redirecting these traditional scholarly methods, as well as exploring newer ones such as object-oriented ontology and sound studies, these essays demonstrate how poetry responds to its intellectual, literary, and material contexts. The contributors propose to connect the small (syllables, words, and phrases) to the large (histories, emotions, faiths, secrets). In doing so, they attempt to work magic on the texts they …

Ballads Of The North, Medieval To Modern: Essays Inspired By Larry Syndergaard, Sandra Ballif Straubhaar, Richard Firth Green

Festschriften, Occasional Papers, and Lectures

This volume is intended as a belated but heartfelt thank-you and Gedenkschrift to the late Larry Syndergaard (1936-2015), long-time professor of English at Western Michigan University and Fellow of the Kommission für Volksdichtung (International Ballad Commission). Larry’s contributions down the decades to ballad studies--particularly Scandinavian and Anglophone--included dozens of papers and articles, as well as his supremely useful book, English Translations of the Scandinavian Medieval Ballads. As David Atkinson and Thomas A. McKean of the Kommission have written (May 2015): “Larry... was a sound scholar with a penetrating mind which he used to support, encourage and befriend others, rather …

Englands Happie Queene: Female Rulers In Early English History, Emily Benes

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

This paper examines the historical records and later literature surrounding three early mythic and historical British queens: Albina, mythic founder of Albion; Cordelia, pre-Roman queen regnant in British legend; and Boudica, the British leader of a first-century CE rebellion against the Romans. My work focuses on who these queens were, what powers they were given, and the mythos around them. I examine when they appear in the historical record and when their stories are expanded upon, and how those stories were influenced by the political culture of England through the early seventeenth century. In particular, I examine English attitudes toward …

Weaponizing Ordinary Objects: Women, Masculine Performance, And The Anxieties Of Men In Medieval Iceland, Steven T. Dunn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis unravels the deeper meanings attributed to ordinary objects, such as clothing and food, in thirteenth-century Icelandic literature and legal records. I argue that women weaponized these ordinary objects to circumvent their social and legal disadvantages by performing acts that medieval Icelandic society deemed masculine. By comparing various literary sources, however, I show that medieval Icelandic society gradually redefined and questioned the acceptability of that behavior, especially during the thirteenth-century. This is particularly evident in the late thirteenth-century Njal’s Saga, wherein a woman named Hallgerd has been villainized for stealing cheese from a troublesome neighbor. If Hallgerd were a …

Bartered Bodies: Medieval Pilgrims And The Tissue Of Faith, George D. Greenia

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

In ‘The Bartered Body,’ George Greenia disentangles the complex desires and experiences of religious travellers of the High Middle Ages who knew the spiritual usefulness of their vulnerable flesh. The bodily remains of the saints housed in pilgrim shrines were not just remnants of a redeemed past, but open portals for spiritual exchange with the living body of the visiting pilgrim.

Colonizing Christianity, George E. Demacopoulos

Religion

Colonizing Christianity employs postcolonial critique to analyze the transformations of Greek and Latin religious identity in the wake of the Fourth Crusade. It argues that the experience of colonization splintered the Greek community, which could not agree how best to respond to the Latin other. By offering a close reading of a handful of texts from the era of the Fourth Crusade and subsequent Latin Empire of Byzantium, this book illuminates mechanisms by which Western Christians authorized and exploited the Christian East and, concurrently, the ways in which Eastern Christians understood and responded to the dramatic shift in their political …

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

Marian Library Faculty Publications

As the best-selling book of the Middle Ages, Books of Hours were owned and read by many medieval Europeans. But who were these 14th- and 15th-century readers? What did it really take to own and use one of these exclusive editions? Keep reading to find out about books and readers in a time very few could afford to own a book and even fewer, perhaps, could read it.

Third blog in a series of three about Books of Hours.

Arthur: God And Hero In Avalon, Christopher R. Fee

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

For fifteen centuries, legends of King Arthur have inspired generations. In the misty past of a Britain under siege, half-remembered events became shrouded in ancient myth and folklore. The resulting tales were told and retold, until over time Arthur, Camelot, Avalon, the Round Table, the Holy Grail, Excalibur, Lancelot and Guinevere all became instantly recognizable icons. Along the way, Arthur’s life and times were recast in the mould of the hero’s journey: his miraculous conception at Tintagel through the magical intercession of his shaman guide, Merlin; the childhood deed of pulling the Sword from the Stone through which Arthur was …

Desire, Frustration, And Resolution In The Ending(S) Of Troilus And Criseyde, Kenny Martin

SMU Journal of Undergraduate Research

This essay analyzes the final stanzas of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde in order to challenge the critical commonplace that the poem’s ending is fraught, fragmented, unsatisfactory, or ultimately inconclusive. It questions the traditional view that the ending is a conspicuous departure from the poetic mode of the earlier poem, as well as the view that the final stanzas are dominated by an ideological struggle between earthly and divine love. Through a close reading of the final five stanzas of the poem—and with particular attention to their echoes throughout the larger work— the essay seeks to elucidate how Chaucer’s poetics of …

The Locus Of Meaning In Medieval Art: Iconography, Iconology, And Interpreting The Visual Imagery Of The Middle Ages, Lena Eva Liepe

Studies in Iconography: Themes and Variations

This book addresses the status and relevance of iconography and iconology in the contemporary scholarly study of medieval art. There is a widespread tendency among art historians today to regard the study of iconography and iconology in the tradition of Erwin Panofsky as an outmoded and trivial pursuit. Nonetheless, Panofsky’s three-level interpretative model sits firmly in the methodological toolkit of art history, and remains a common point of reference among adherents and adversaries alike. Iconography and iconology demands to be taken seriously as a feature of continued praxis in the discipline. The book contains a collection of essays on the …

Early Modern Britain’S Relationship To Its Past: The Historiographical Fortunes Of The Legends Of Brute, Albina, And Scota, Philip M. Robinson-Self

Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

This volume considers the reception in the early modern period of four popular medieval myths of nationhood—the legends of Brutus, Albina, and Scota—tracing their intertwined literary and historiographical afterlives. The book is particularly timely in its dialogue with current investigations into early modern historiography and the period's relationship to its past, its engagement with pressing issues in identity and gender studies, and its analysis of British national origin stories at a time when modern Britain is considering its own future as a nation.

The Christianization Of Judith: Considering The Hieronymian Translation Of Liber Iudith And Jerome’S Christianizing Agenda, Brody Van Roekel

The Hilltop Review

I will consider Jerome’s translation using gendered analysis while considering carefully how hints of his own preoccupations and Christianizing agendas can be found within. In Liber Iudith, Jerome gives a night’s work to a text illustrating the story of the Hebrew widow Judith single-handedly overcoming the seemingly unassailable Assyrians. Comparing Jerome’s translation to the earlier Septuagint text, a number of significant departures can be located. These departures demonstrate Jerome’s conception of proper Christian widowhood, related too to his qualms with femininity. The Hieronymian changes then appear to be both culturally-motivated and implemented in response to the demands of an …

Latteri On Weiss, 'Sefer Yesirah And Its Contexts: Other Jewish Voices', Natalie Latteri

Theology & Religious Studies

Book Review by Natalie Latteri on Tzahi Weiss' Sefer Yesirah and Its Contexts: Other Jewish Voices. This review was originally published in the Journal of Medieval Worlds, Vol. 1, Number 1, pp. 117-120.

Kata Ostojic, Marija Maracic, Josipa Karaca

SICANJE

No abstract provided.

Janja Majstorovic, Marija Maracic, Josipa Karaca

SICANJE

No abstract provided.

Online Decreta Regni Mediaevalis Hungariae. The Laws Of The Medieval Kingdom Of Hungary, János M. Bak

All Complete Monographs

This is the online, revised and updated edition of the five volumes of DRHM published between 1989 and 2013. It contains the complete corpus of statute law of Hungary from 1000 to 1526 AD, and the collection of customary law of 1517 (Tripartitum) for the first time in the Latin original with an annotated English translation.

Zora Mendes, Marija Maracic, Josipa Karaca

SICANJE

No abstract provided.

Francis Quarles And Jesuit Images: Some Observations, Clifford Davidson

Early Drama, Art, and Music

An otherwise unpublished study of Francis Quarles's Emblemes.

It’S Elementary: The Bayeux Tapestry As A Medieval Educational Tool, Sarah Bulger

OUR Journal: ODU Undergraduate Research Journal

The Bayeux Tapestry, a 230-foot-long, 950-year-old Anglo-Norman embroidery has baffled historians resulting in extensive (and diverse) scholarship since its rediscovery in the eighteenth century. The Bayeux Tapestry plays a preeminent role (outside of contemporaneous manuscripts and texts) in deciphering aspects of medieval life in England through its visual representation of the age of the Norman Conquest. Long-standing assumptions about the Bayeux Tapestry’s commission, production, and purpose have accumulated through the years based on a single inventory document from 1476 postulating its intended location and function as a religious ornament for Bayeux Cathedral. Modern academics have explored themes readily visible …

Visionary Pastiche : Hildegard Von Bingen's Reconciliation Of Divine Experience And Representation, Rachel Lynn Gamarra

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Hildegard von Bingen invents a new rhetorical topos—that of prismatic refraction—which allows her to communicate her divine revelation to others through narrative, artwork, and explication. While her patristic counterparts, Augustine and Jerome, think about rendering the divine only as it relates to their understanding of Scripture, Hildegard exploits rhetoric in order to push the boundaries of human epistemology through grappling with her unique mystical experience. Though Hildegard recognizes that there is a degree of difference between her visions and her representation of them, Hildegard still finds value in language as a communicative tool. Hildegard refracts her divine experience in Scivias, …