Medieval Studies Commons^™

Turning Back The Tides: The Anglo-Saxon Vice Of Ofermod In Tolkien's Fall Of Arthur, Colin J. Cutler

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

Tolkien’s Fall of Arthur has at its heart the theme of ofermod, a theme which appears throughout Tolkien’s criticism and creative work. In his essay “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son,” he argues that the Anglo-Saxon word ofermod in the poem The Battle of Maldon condemns the warband’s leader for an over-reaching pride which places his men in desperate straits. This paper conducts a study of the word and its derivatives in various Anglo-Saxon texts, taking the Microfiche Concordance to Old English as its starting point, and traces Tolkien’s creative use of the theme in both his tales of Middle-earth …

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 …

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.

Covetousness In Book 5 Of Confessio Amantis: A Medieval Precursor To Neoliberalism, Jeffery G. Stoyanoff

Accessus

In Book 5 of John Gower’s Confessio Amantis, Genius’s extended discussion of Covetousness demonstrates how this subtype of Avarice leads to the ruin of the networks of collectives that make up society. Interestingly, the process by which Covetousness damages the collectives that make up these networks looks a lot like the neoliberalism that has come to dominate a number of governments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Gower’s tales trace the spread of this sin from the top of society to the bottom; from the highly public to the intimately personal. In all scenarios, Covetousness is a force of …

Preface, Georgiana Donavin, Eve Salisbury

Accessus

This preface introduces Accessus 4.2.

Remix The Medieval Manuscript: Experiments With Digital Infrastructure, Laura Braunstein, Michelle R. Warren, Baylauris Byrnesim

Dartmouth Library Staff Publications

Remix the Manuscript: A Chronicle of Digital Experiments is a collaborative research project that takes up this challenge. It brings together academics, librarians, technologists, conservators, and students to study the many permutations of a single manuscript—a fifteenth-century Middle English prose chronicle of Great Britain, commonly referred to as the “Prose Brut.” Our project raises fundamental questions about the digital research environment. How is today’s code configuring tomorrow’s historical knowledge? How do digital technologies affect our access to and understanding of material culture? By investigating these broad questions through the example of one manuscript, we define a limited yet infinitely …

Unusual Accidental Signs, Microtonal Inflections, And Marchetto Of Padua, Alan D. Richtmyer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis addresses the question of how an interval roughly half the width of the minor semitone could be incorporated into the otherwise strictly diatonic framework of the medieval gamut and then asks whether certain unusual accidentals signs found in fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century sources were meant to signal such inflections.

It demonstrates that when a tone is subdivided so as to produce a microtone, the chromatic part that remains must either be made explicit, or must be transferred elsewhere in the scale so that the encompassing framework of the gamut will remain intact. It shows that when the former …

“Dyrne Langað”: Secret Longing And Homo-Amory In Beowulf And J.R.R. Tolkien’S The Lord Of The Rings, Christopher Vaccaro

Journal of Tolkien Research

“‘Dyrne Langað’: Secret Longing and Homo-amory in Beowulf and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings” investigates the close “homoamorous” relationship between Frodo and Samwise, employing a close reading of select passages from the eighth-century English poem, Beowulf. The argument begins with a clarification of terms. Afterwards, it focuses upon the cruces related to a key scene involving Beowulf’s departure and compares the intensity of the unspoken love Hroðgar has for Beowulf to the love Sam has for Frodo at the Grey Havens. Ultimately, the essay argues for a new way of reading both departure scenes.

The Inklings And King Arthur (2017), Edited By Sørina Higgins, Gabriel Schenk

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review by Gabriel Schenk of The Inklings and King Arthur (2017) ed, by Sørina Higgins

The Lost & Found Game Series: Teaching Medieval Religious Law In Context, Owen Gottlieb, Ian Schreiber

Presentations and other scholarship

Lost & Found is a strategy card-to-mobile game series that teaches medieval religious legal systems with attention to period accuracy and cultural and historical context. The Lost & Found project seeks to expand the discourse around religious legal systems, to enrich public conversations in a variety of communities, and to promote greater understanding of the religious traditions that build the fabric of the United States. Comparative religious literacy can build bridges between and within communities and prepare learners to be responsible citizens in our pluralist democracy. The first game in the series is a strategy game called Lost & Found …

Defining Communal Identity In The Ottoman Empire: Hagop Gagosian And The Mormon Armenians, 1890–1910, Courtney Cook

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

“A Kindred Sigh For Thee”: British Responses To The Greek War For Independence, Susannah Morrison

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

"Some Dreamers Of The Golden Dream": The Construction Of The Golden Age Myth(S) In The Age Of Ottoman Decline, Ian Mclaughlin

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

This paper considers the role and construction of golden age myths in seventeenth-century debates about how to renew the flagging Ottoman Empire. Policymakers and preachers prescribed radically different solutions based on which golden age they idealized—whether the time of the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century or the reign of Sultan Suleiman in the sixteenth. Throughout most of the 1600s, the pendulum swung back and forth violently depending on which faction had the sultan’s ear. Charismatic mosque preachers like Kadizade Efendi whipped up Istanbul crowds against coffee, while advice writers such as Koçi Bey urged expelling “outsiders” from the military …

“It Is A Privilege To Pee”: The Rise And Demise Of The Pay Toilet In America, Katie Richards

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

From The Editor, Ian Mclaughlin

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

Department Awards

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

Seasoned Antisemitism: Cannibalism In The Destruction Of Jerusalem, Bailey Ludwig

English and Creative Writing Summer Fellows

My project examines an episode of maternal cannibalism within the medieval poem The Destruction of Jerusalem. Several variations of the story of the 70 AD Roman siege of Jerusalem that include this particular episode exist; the story even has roots in the bible. I am looking at the poem within this context and noting its differences in order to best determine its intentions. This version, more so than any other I have encountered, eliminates complicating factors, such as the murder of the child or presence of male figures, in order to make its antisemitic message as direct as possible. The …

Material Culture In The Religious Narratives Of The Old English Exeter Book, Justin J. Larsen

English Language and Literature ETDs

The term “material culture” represents many different approaches and schools of thought across multiple academic disciplines, but its place in the study of medieval literature is particularly difficult to ascertain. The long tradition of simply using the archaeological record to “fill in” gaps left in the textual historical record does little to expand our understanding of the place that these objects actually occupied in the users’ daily lives, nor does it allow us to make greater connections between the texts, their audiences, and their broader environment. Likewise, the role of the text and its reception has a great deal to …

Flying, Hunting, Reading: Rethinking Falcon-Woman Comparisons, Sara Petrosillo

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This paper assesses structures of power through the medieval practice of falconry, offering two considerations about how feminist studies and animal studies fruitfully converge: first, assessing a human-animal relationship helps dismantle patriarchal control when human handler stands for patriarch and subjugated animal stands for domesticated woman. Second, this particular human-animal relationship represents a feminist poetics. In addition to overturning misogynous comparisons between falcons and women, something more pointedly self-representational occurred when women were themselves depicted as falconers. Rather than a human-animal relationship standing in for a man-woman relationship, men seem to be out of the foreground, or even out of …