European Languages and Societies Commons^™

Three Poems From Flowing Toward Serenity By Tan Xiao, Xinlu Yan

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Tan Xiao is a Chinese poet whose poetry examines the relationships between an individual and his or her family, traditions, and society as a whole. The language he uses is deceptively simple, but the poignant observations and insights ensure that his poetry is relevant and relatable. This article includes three poems by Tan and accompanying commentary.

Five Poems From Born Into By Uwe Kolbe, Louise Stoehr

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Uwe Kolbe is one of the major German poets of his generation. Both part of the dissident scene in East Germany and, at the same time, fiercely independent, he early on reworked literary tradition, detailed observation, and personal experience into poems that clearly express his own poetic vision in a distinct voice. Born October 17, 1957, in East Berlin, Kolbe was drawn to writing at a young age. He published his first volume of poetry, Hineingeboren (Born Into), in the former German Democratic Republic in 1980 and in 1982 in West Germany. “Hineingeboren” has become Kolbe’s signature poem …

Autumn By Jules Breton, Sharon Fish Mooney

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Translation of Autumn by Jules Breton with commentary.

Martial Vii.61 By Martial, George Held

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No abstract provided.

Three Poems From The Blind Glassblower By Adam Fethi, Hager Ben Driss

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No abstract provided.

The Love Letter Poetry Contest, Roselee Bundy

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This is a translation of eight sets of poems and responses (out of a total of twenty) from the The Love Letter Poetry Contest Held in the Imperial Court in 1102. It was held on the 2^nd and 7^th days of the intercalary 5^th month of 1102 in the Japanese imperial court. For the event of the 2^nd, men had sent to court women poems declaring their love, and the women responded with poems rebuffing them. For the event of the 7^th, court women sent to the men poems complaining of the …

The Shoulders And The Burden By Abdellatif Laâbi, Allan Johnston, Guillemette C. Johnston

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English translation of poem by Moroccan poet Abdellatif Laâbi.

Four Prose Poems By Ramy Al-Asheq, Levi Thompson

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No abstract provided.

Liking Mozart By Chen Chia-Tai, Elaine Wong

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"Liking Mozart" is an English translation of a Chinese poem written by the Taiwanese poet Chen Chia-tai (1954- ).

Foreword, Molly Lynde-Recchia

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No abstract provided.

Transference Vol. 7, Fall 2019

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Complete issue with covers of Transference Vol. 7, Fall 2019

Godfrey Of Viterbo’S Pantheon And John Gower’S Confessio Amantis: The Story Of Apollonius Retold, Thari L. Zweers

Accessus

Even though Gower identifies Godfrey of Viterbo's Pantheon in the first two lines of the "Tale of Apollonius of Tyre" in Book VIII of the Confessio Amantis as the main source for his retelling of this tale, the connection between these two works has long been mostly ignored, and even denied. This essay aims to remedy this oversight by showcasing how Gower went beyond merely mentioning the Pantheon and used Godfrey's version of the tale as a thematic and stylistic model for his account of this incestuous tale of desire. Gower takes his cue from Godfrey in imbuing the titillating …

Undiagnosing Iphis: How The Lack Of Trauma In John Gower’S “Iphis And Iante” Reinforces A Subversive Trans Narrative, C Janecek

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Trauma has long played a role in queer narratives, including Ovid’s “Iphis and Ianthe”, which many scholars have interpreted as reinforcing heteronormativity through Iphis’s transformation into a man in order to marry Ianthe. However, I argue that John Gower’s rendition of this tale reframes Iphis as a trans man and allows us to understand the poem as a subversive trans narrative that revolts against cisnormative conceptions of gender. Utilizing Judith Butler’s writing on the medicalization of gender, I explore the relationship between trauma, performance, and gender within the Ovidian and Gowerian versions of Iphis.

Foreword, Georgiana Donavin, Eve Salisbury

Accessus

This is the Foreword to Accessus 5.1

Imperatrix, Domina, Rex: Conceptualizing The Female King In Twelfth-Century England, Coral Lumbley

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This article draws on methods from transgender theory, historicist literary studies, and visual analysis of medieval sealing practices to show that Empress Matilda of England was controversially styled as a female king during her career in the early to mid twelfth century. While the chronicle Gesta Stephani castigates Matilda’s failure to engage in sanctioned gendered behaviors as she waged civil war to claim her inherited throne, Matilda’s seal harnesses both masculine and feminine signifiers in order to proclaim herself both king and queen. While Matilda’s transgressive gender position was targeted by her detractors during her lifetime, the obstinately transgender object …

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 …

Three Laisses From The Franco-Italian Song Of Roland, John T. Duval

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These three laisses, that is, decasyllabic verse-paragraphs of various lengths whose lines end with the same assonance, are from the thirteenth-century Franco-Italian version of The Song of Roland, known as the V4 manuscript of St. Mark's Church, Venice. They illustrate creative thirteenth-century innovations, in a slightly different language, added to the much better known twelfth-century Anglo-Norman French Chanson de Roland, known as the Oxford version.

“La Chanson de Roland”: The French Corpus, Vol. 1, Part 2, The Venice 4 Version, 2005, Brepols, 2005, pp. 97, 100-1, 246-7.

Transference Vol. 6, Fall 2018

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Complete issue with covers of Transference Vol. 6, Fall 2018

Passion Through Slander: Saintliness, Deviance, And Suffering By Speech In The Book Of Margery Kempe, Connor Yeck

The Hilltop Review

A late medieval mystic prone to violent bouts of sobbing, Margery Kempe suffers a range of verbal abuse in her titular text, ranging from simple rumors, to outright accusations of heresy and possession. While we might accept such accusatory speech as indicative of the era and Margery’s controversial role as a public “holy woman,” further investigation reveals a narrative strongly driven by the notion of “suffering by slander,” and the weight attributed to the spoken word. The Book of Margery Kempe shows us an oral culture filled with “deviant speech,” and within its own rhetorical construction as a text, elevates …

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

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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 …

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 …

The Impact Of Latin Culture On Medieval And Early Modern Scottish Writing, Alessandra F. Petrina, Ian M. Johnson

Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

In the late medieval and early modern periods, native tongues and traditions, including those of Scotland, cohabited and competed with latinitas in fascinating and inventive ways. Scottish latinity had its distinctive stamp, most intriguingly so in its effects upon the literary vernacular and on themes of national identity. The present book shows how, when viewed through the prism of its latinity, Scottish textuality was distinctive and fecund. The flowering of Scottish writing owed itself to a subtle combination of literary praxis, the ideal of eloquentia, and ideological deftness. This combination enabled writers to service a burgeoning national literary tradition, and …

Saints And Sainthood Around The Baltic Sea: Identity, Literacy, And Communication In The Middle Ages, Carsten Selch Jensen

Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

This volume addresses the history of saints and sainthood in the Middle Ages in the Baltic Region with a special focus on the cult of saints in Russia, Prussia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, and Latvia (more commonly referred to in the Middle Ages as Livonia). The articles cover a wide range of topics, for example the introduction of foreign (and "old") saints into new regions, the creation of new local cults of saints in newly Christianized regions, the role of the cult of saints in the creation of political and lay identities, the adaption of the cult of saints in …

Intersex And The Pardoner’S Body, Kim Zarins

Accessus

Most scholars today have retreated from reading into the Pardoner's body in favor of more figurative readings that emphasize his lack of masculinity, and such lack is then linked to his dejection and despair. Other, more affirming readings center the Pardoner's performance, which allows him to model any sort of body desired through figuration. While such positions dominate and older theories like Beryl Rowland's proposal of an intersex Pardoner are dismissed, in fact, an intersex reading might be a more life-affirming interpretation, not only in terms of reframing the Pardoner's body as manifesting variation as opposed to lack, but also …

Foreword, Georgiana Donavin, Eve Salisbury

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The co-editors of Accessus are pleased to present "Intersex and the Pardoner's Body" by Kim Zarins.

Notes On Contributors

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No abstract provided.

To Fabullus (Invitation) By Catullus, Ranald A. Barnicot

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Translated from Latin by Ranald Barnicot

In Jerusalem By Tamim Al-Barghouti, Houssem Ben Lazreg

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Translated from Arabic by Houssem Ben Lazreg

Gina, Steamers On The Havel, I Made My Landing On An Island Where..., And Both Day And Evening Now Began To Seep By Georg Heym, William A. Ruleman Iii

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Translated from German by William Ruleman

Poor Rutebeuf By Rutebeuf/ Leo Ferré, Roger Greenwald

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Translated from French by Roger Greenwald