Medieval Studies Commons^™

Pirates, Merchants, And A Small Battle On The Island Of Kythira In The Later Middle Ages, David D. Terry

The Hilltop Review

Merchants in the later medieval Mediterranean crossed boundaries both geographical and moral. In November 1327 two Mallorcan investors complained to the king’s court that their ship, which they had sent to the eastern Mediterranean laden with tradable goods, had been ransacked by the violent natives of Kythera, an Aegean island at that time ruled by Venice. The Venetians, always conscious of maintaining good trade relations, sent representatives to the island and conducted a full investigation. After interviewing the islanders, the duke of the island sent his conclusions back to Venice: the Catalan “merchants” had come ashore on the island and …

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 …

Mechanized Identity: The Blood-Mill Of Richard Coer De Lyon, Andrew S. Thomas

The Hilltop Review

The seven-thousand-line Middle English romance, Richard Coer de Lyon, is not often read as a text fascinated with machinery. The semi-historical, superlative, titular character and his various marvelous and deeply disturbing deeds usually claim most attention, and not without reason. There is much to examine in the heroically cannibalistic Richard, who presents a complex and often troubling vision of the ways both Englishness and the Saracen Other can be constructed within romance. Alongside these well-studied qualities, however, is a strange attention within the text to sieges and siege engines. Richard’s army is accompanied by a large, named siege tower …

Experience And Authority: Knowledge, Gender, And The Creation Of The Self In The Book Of Margery Kempe And Late Medieval Travel Literature, Rebecca D. Fox

The Hilltop Review

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between written authority, experiential authority, travel, and gender in late medieval travel literature. By expanding Terrence M. Bowers’ discussion of travel as a masculine rite of passage beyond Margery Kempe to include Marco Polo, John Mandeville, and Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, the relationships between the aims and experiences of each figure are clarified. Each figure claims that their travels have given them unique a experiential knowledge which allows them to both recreate themselves on their own terms and to assert their own authority in opposition to written authority. Variables such …

Liturgical Processions In The Black Death, Eric A. Gobel

The Hilltop Review

The popularity of the flagellant movement in the German speaking lands during the Black Death is due to a number of factors. Flagellation may seem like a nonsensical reaction to despair from a modern perspective, but for medieval people, the itinerant processional penitent pilgrims represented more than a bloody, painful spectacle. Rather, it was a rational and emotion reaction to their troubles. The success of the flagellants lays, not in the grotesquerie of their performances, but instead in their ability to provide people with familiar, engaging ways to perform and observe penance while also departing from ecclesiastical norms that had …

Philosophical Romance: Figures Of Venus In “The Knight's Tale”, Caleb Molstad

The Hilltop Review

This essay examines Chaucer's use of the Roman goddess Venus in “The Knight's Tale.” It looks at the astrological, mythological, and allegorical meanings that he gives to the figure of Venus in the poem. The essay also considers imaginative techniques, including ekphrasis and allegory, that Chaucer uses to express philosophical ideas within a chivalric romance. Ultimately, it argues that Chaucer uses Venus in “The Knight's Tale” to imaginatively unfold the Boethian idea that love governs the world.

Killing The Rotten Citric Lump: A Somatic Reading Of The Death Of Shahrazād’S Hunchback, Erin S. Lynch

The Hilltop Review

Throughout the narrative of the Hunchback’s Tale within the Thousand and One Nights, the hunchback is always at the center of the action, yet with the exception of the first time he is “killed,” he is never written as the reader’s focus, except in instances of violence performed against the hunchback’s body. The reader’s gaze is constantly drawn to the killer, rather than the victim, and led to laugh at or empathize with the killers of the hunchbacked corpse, rather than the deformed, ever-abused body. Neither the champion nor the foil, the body of the hunchback functions merely as …

In Awe Of The Past, Charles Lein

The Hilltop Review

No abstract provided.

Late Medieval Mediterranean Apocalypticism: Joachimist Ideas In Ramon Llull’S Crusade Treatises, Michael Sanders

The Hilltop Review

The thirteenth century witnessed dramatic changes that transformed the medieval world and remain important today. The violent changes caused by the War of the Sicilian Vespers and Spiritual Franciscan movement popularized the apocalyptic ideas of the twelfth-century Italian abbot, Joachim of Fiore. The abbot's historical paradigms of biblical history influenced many southern Europeans, including the medieval mystic, missionary, and philosopher Ramon Llull (c. 1232-1316). Llull dedicated his life to converting the world to Catholic Christianity using a variety of means, including evangelical missions, Neoplatonic philosophy, and crusades. Llull's crusade treatises, the Tractatus de modo convertendi infideles (1292), Liber de fine …

The Rhetoric Of Exile In The Preaching And Teaching Of The Anglo-Saxon Church: Glimpses Of The Cultural Ideology In Old English Homilies, Yi-Chin Huang

The Hilltop Review

Abstract.

This article explores how the early medieval vernacular homiletic discourse produced in Anglo-Saxon England strategically employs the rhetoric exile, a theme whose significance is also articulated widely in Old English poetry. As words denoting such similar ideas as exile, banishment, exclusion, casting/driving out, etc., recur significantly in the homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church, including the homilies of Ælfric, Wulfstan, and the Blickling and Vercelli Codices, I propose an analysis of the instances in which the rhetoric about exile is used in preaching and theology in order to reveal not only the Church authors/teachers’ ability and effort to translate Latin …

Hamlet And Amleth, Princes Of Denmark: Shakespeare And Saxo Grammaticus As Historians And Kingly Actions In The Hamlet/Amleth Narrative, Megan Arnott

The Hilltop Review

Shakespeare played a decisive role in creating a Middle Ages for the generations that came after him. The two tetralogies, which include Richard II, Henry IV Part 1 and Part 2, Henry V, Henry VI Part 1-3 and Richard III, comprise the body of work that is commonly studied for medievalisms, and in these plays Shakespeare’s interpretation of the past demonstrates nation building, ‘Englishness,’ and a concern about the nature of power. A different kind of engagement with the medieval past is occurring in Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, though Hamlet is no less concerned with …

Singing The Story: Narrative Voice And The Old English Scop, Lisa M. Horton

The Hilltop Review

The picture of Anglo-Saxon society that we receive through its literature is a direct result of the life of the Old English scop. His personality and experiences filter into the stories that he tells and provide nuanced interpretations of both histories and legends, while his position within Anglo-Saxon society allows him direct access to the great events and persons of his time. As an active participant in his society, at the feet or even at the right hand of a king, he wields profound influence; as an observer and commentator on his society, he records and interprets both reality and …