Medieval Studies Commons^™

Book Review: Guillelmus De Aragonia, De Nobilitate Animi, Ed. And Trans. William D. Paden And Mario Trovato, Jason Aleksander

Faculty Publications

Review of: Guillelmus de Aragonia, De nobilitate animi, ed. and trans. William D. Paden and Mario Trovato. (Harvard Studies in Medieval Latin 2.) Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012. Pp. xvi, 193. $40. ISBN: 978-0-674-06812-4.

Caving Into The Will Of The Masses?: Relics In Augustine's City Of God, Jessica Gadis

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis examines Augustine of Hippo's support of the cult of relics through the lens of Peter Brown's revision of the two-tiered model which was proposed in his 1981 book The Cult of Saints. More specifically, this thesis attempts to explain the introduction of saint's relics in the final book, book 22, of Augustine's magnum opus The City of God (De Civitate Dei). After providing proof of the theologian's opposition to the cult of relics in his youth, historical, biographical, and textual evidence is used to trace his later change of heart. This change in position is crystallized in …

Review Of Ian Levy, Philip Krey, And Thomas Ryan, The Bible In Medieval Tradition: The Letter To The Romans., Stephen E. Lahey

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

Paul’s Letter to the Romans is the fullest account of Paul’s overall theology, and hence is the primary document for understanding the earliest Christian thought. Commentaries on the Letter to the Romans generally provide theologians the perfect venue with which to depict their understanding of the basic elements of Christianity, and it would follow that students and proponents of medieval scripture exegesis and theology should have ready access to Romans commentaries in translation. Thomas Aquinas’s commentary has recently become more widely available, and a translation of William of St. Thierry was published by Cistercian Publications in 1980, but until this …

Interrogating The "Collapse" Of The Roman Empire: Historiography And Instruction, Jon Pesner

History - Master of Arts in Teaching

No abstract provided.

The Ethics Of Mourning: The Role Of Material Culture And Public Politics In The 'Book Of The Duchess' And The 'Pearl' Poem, Tarren Andrews

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This project is a socio-historic analysis of two late 14^th century dream visions: Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess and the Pearl poem. Utilizing Robert Pogue Harrison’s concept of objectifying grief through ritualized communal mourning, this thesis examines the ways in which mourning literature functioned as consolatory device, and a form of public performance for the powerful patrons who commissioned the pieces. By engaging with pre-existing communities of grief, material culture, and courtly discourse these poems perform the work of mourning while simultaneously enacting modes of public performativity that stress the ethics of grieving, and suggest that, for royal patrons, …

"Nayles Large And Lang": Masculine Identity And The Anachronic Object In The York Crucifixion Play, Daisy Black

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

My Heart Is In The East: Exploring Theater As A Vehicle For Change, Inspired By The Poetic Performances Of Ancient Andalucía, Jessica Litwak

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This study addresses the research question “How Do I Inspire Personal and Social Change Through My Theater Practice?” I implement the theory and practice of H.E.A.T., a fusion theater system, combining use of theater arts as healing practice, educational asset, activist tool, and an art form.I research different ways that theater can affect change, focusing specifically on the use of history in performance.I dramatically interpret a period of history where performance and poetry contributed to change.I utilize qualitative methods including performance ethnography, auto ethnography, arts-based research, and historical research.I describe the fieldwork in conflict zones in the Middle East, which …

Peter Abelard’S Theology Of Atonement: A Multifaceted Approach And Reevaluation, Denis Kaiser

Faculty Publications

As a person trained primarily in philosophy, Peter Abelard employed an intense questioning mentality in fleshing out his theological ideas.  His extreme debating style of totally deconstructing theological positions and then afterward including some of those same aspects into his own views made it easy for his religio-political enemies to take apparently heterodox statements and declare these as representative of Abelard’s entire atonement theology.  However, many of his theological beliefs are supported in the New Testament and were already held by the church fathers.  He frequently affirmed Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice as the ransom to redeem man.  He rejected various contemporary …

All Fortune Is Good Fortune: The Role Of Fortuna In A Monotheistic Literary World, Kimberly Bridgewater

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The goddess Fortuna, who ruled over chance and the giving of worldly gifts was a pagan deity who survived through the conversion of Christianity in Europe. Her survival and inclusion in Medieval literature caused conflicts with the Christian religion, especially in relation to beliefs in free will and God’s Providence. Now, twenty-first century scholars are still attempting to figure out how the role of free will can co-exist with Fortuna, especially in regard to the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, who render Fortuna as a dominant entity in the lives of their Christian characters. …

Robot Saints, Christopher B. Swift

Publications and Research

In the Middle Ages, articulating religious figures like wooden Deposition crucifixes and ambulatory saints were tools for devotion, techno-mythological objects that distilled the wonders of engineering and holiness. Robots are gestures toward immortality, created in the face of the undeniable fact and experience of the ongoing decay of our fleshy bodies. Both like and unlike human beings, robots and androids occupy a nebulous perceptual realm between life and death, animation and inanimation. Masahiro Mori called this in-between space the “uncanny valley.” In this essay I argue that unlike a modern person apprehending an android (the uncanny human-like object that resides …

The Fisherman By Anonymous, Luke J. Chambers

Transference

Translated from the Old French with commentary by Luke Chambers.

The Queer And The Bodily: Explorations Of Power In Women's Visionary Writing In The Book Of Margery Kempe 2014, Jayne Emerson Stacconi

Master's Theses

The provocative Book of Margery Kempe is a seminal text in the history of female authorship. Claiming to be the first written autobiography, The Book serves as a literary representation of womanhood during the late fourteenth to the fifteenth centuries when Margery was writing, and also speaks to circulating medieval discourses of religion, pilgrimage, and sexuality. Participating in medieval women’s visionary writing as a genre, Margery’s visionary power is a tool by which she is able to emancipate herself from the limiting roles of wife and mother. Additionally, by working within the conventions of visionary writing, Margery is able to …

Bound By Words: Oath-Taking And Oath-Breaking In Medieval Lceland And Anglo-Saxon England, Gregory L. Laing

Dissertations

The legal and literary texts of early medieval England and Iceland share a common emphasis on truth and demonstrate its importance through the sheer volume of textual references. One of the most common applications of truth-seeking in these sources occurs in the swearing of oaths. Instances of oath-taking and oath-breaking, therefore, are critical textual loci wherein the language of swearing unites an individual’s socially constructed reputation and his personal guarantees under the careful supervision of the community. Traditionally, scholars looking at truth and attestation from the later medieval period tend to view early cases of swearing as procedural, artless, or …

Student-Centered, Interactive Teaching Of The Anglo-Saxon Cult Of The Cross, Christopher R. Fee

English Faculty Publications

Although most Anglo-Saxonists deal with Old English texts and contexts as a matter of course in our research agendas, many of us teach relatively few specialized courses focused on our areas of expertise to highly-trained students; thus, many Old English texts and objects which are commonplace in our research lives can seem arcane and esoteric to a great many of our students. This article proposes to confront this gap, to suggest some ways of teaching a few potentially obscure texts and artifacts to undergrads, to offer some guidance about uses of technology in this endeavor, and to help fellow teachers …

The Metaphor Of Battle In The Mysticism Of Teresa Of Avila, Ana Maria Carvajal Jaramillo

Open Access Theses

Study of the influence of chivalric romances in the language of Saint Teresa of Avila. Anaylisis of the metaphor of religion as the battle of a knight.

Constructing Community From Corpses In Medieval English And Icelandic Literature, Erin C Kissick

Open Access Dissertations

I argue that the bodies of the dead interred within medieval texts are used as focal points for the communities created within those texts. The most famous textual medieval corpses are the relics of saints as described in hagiographies, relics which, outside of these texts, became the centerpieces of many medieval communities, both religious and secular, as demonstrated by Patrick Geary and Carolyn Walker Bynum. More broadly, material culture scholars such as Howard Williams have shown that the graves of nonsaints played a significant role in the preservation of communal memory. In medieval communities, ancestors and other long-gone ancient communities …

With One's Own Arms: Condottieri, Machiavelli, And The Rise Of The Florentine Militia, Michael N. Boncardo

Student Publications

This paper examines the use of mercenary warfare on the Italian peninsula during the late 15th and early 16th centuries. It later focuses on the unique political and economic environment in Florence that led to Niccolo Machiavelli orchestrating the creation of the Florentine militia.

The Gawain-Poet And The Textual Environment Of Fourteenth-Century English Anticlericalism, Ethan Campbell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The 14th-century Middle English poems Cleanness and Patience, homiletic retellings of biblical stories which appear in the same manuscript as Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, offer moral lessons to a general Christian audience, but the introduction to Cleanness, with its reference to men whom "prestez arn called," suggests that a central feature of their rhetoric is anticlerical critique. Priests do not appear as exemplars but as potentially filthy hypocrites who inspire God's harshest wrath, since their sins may contaminate Christ's body in the Eucharist.

Using Cleanness's opening lines as a guide, this dissertation …

Apocalyptic Mentalities In Late-Medieval England, Steven A. Hackbarth

Dissertations (1934 -)

Apocalypticism, defined by expectation of an imminent End, assumes many forms and proves influential in the second half of the Fourteenth Century in England. Throughout my study, I demonstrate that a rich apocalyptic environment emerges in works of the period, including those of Chaucer, Gower, Langland, and the Pearl-poet. In this period, apocalypticism has provided explanations for plague, narratives that make evil more vivid, and arguments for urgent action. It gives contemporary phenomena special meaning. My study is organized around conspicuous centers of meaning that work reciprocally with the apocalyptic, simultaneously defining the End and defined by it. First, I …

The Creation Of Heaven In The Middle Ages, William Storm

Dissertations (1934 -)

My dissertation focuses on the intersection of the discourses of space and place, art, religion, and politics in poetical accounts of heaven. My study investigates how authors deploy these various traditions to create a heaven that accommodates the needs of a particular audience. Heaven is, according to Yi-Fu Tuan, a "mythical place," which cannot be located. To avoid the problems of a "mythical place," we represent that location with slightly-blurred experiential knowledge or communally-sanctioned practices. The creation of heaven, I argue, does not occur ex nihilo but through a refashioning of knowledge and practices to engage audiences with descriptions of …