Medieval Studies Commons^™

Passion And Conflict: Medieval Islamic Views Of The West, Karen C. Pinto

History Faculty Publications

This article analyzes the representation of al-Andalus and North Africa in medieval Islamic maps from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries. In contrast to other maps of the Mediterranean, which display a veneer of harmony and balance, the image of the Maghrib is by deliberate design one of conflict and confusion; of love and hate; of male vs. female; of desire vs rejection. This paper interprets and explains the reasons behind the unusual depiction of Andalus and the Maghrib by medieval Islamic cartographers. In addition, this article develops a new methodology of interpreting medieval Islamic maps employing a deconstruction of …

"Knowledge Will Be Manifold": Daniel 12.4 And The Idea Of Intellectual Progress In The Middle Ages, J. R. Webb

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Social Healing In Gower's Visio Angliae, Kara Mcshane

English and Creative Writing Faculty Publications

I argue that Gower uses metaphorical images common from vernacular romance—particularly the image of the rudderless ship—to help himself and his readers process the upheaval of the Great Rising. As a healing narrative, the Visio is meant as a public, political text that can begin healing at both personal and communal levels. The Visio is reforming, but it is not radical. In Gower’s worldview, social reform must begin with the highest levels of society and move downward.

Introduction: John Gower's Twenty-First Century Appeal, Kara Mcshane, R. F. Yeager

English and Creative Writing Faculty Publications

This is the introductory essay to a special issue of the South Atlantic Review focusing on John Gower. Guest editor for this issue is Kara L. McShane with the assistance of R. F. Yeager.

Situating Digital Archives, Michelle R. Warren

Dartmouth Scholarship

This essay is the introduction to an essay collection about the Middle English Prose Brut manuscript purchased by Dartmouth College in 2006. I consider how the competing pressures of access and preservation condition scholarship in medieval studies. I suggest several analogies between the digital humanities in general, digital philology in medieval studies, and the historical practices of medieval writers: hacking, dark archive, and prosthesis.

The Beowulf Poet's Accommodation Of Pre-Christian Germanic Culture, Walter Beverly

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues for the Beowulf poet's more accommodating perspective on pre-Christian Germanic culture, when examined in comparison to other, later Germanic authors of works such as Icelandic sagas and Danish pseudo-history. The primary components of Beowulf I address to argue for this point are the poet's incorporation of pagan Germanic cosmology, and his rendering of Beowulf according to two different heroic types in Germanic literature, those being the model thane and the model king.

The Problem Of Temporality In The Literary Framework Of Nicholas Of Cusa’S De Pace Fidei, Jason Aleksander

Faculty Publications

This paper explores Nicholas of Cusa’s framing of the De pace fidei as a dialogue taking place incaelo rationis. On the one hand, this framing allows Nicholas of Cusa to argue that all religious rites presuppose the truth of a single, unified faith and so temporally manifest divine logos in a way accommodated to the historically unique conventions of different political communities. On the other hand, at the end of the De pace fidei, the interlocutors in the heavenly dialogue are enjoined to return to earth and lead their countrymen in a gradual conversion to the acceptance of rites which …

Pieces Of A Mosaic: Revised Identities Of The Almoravid Dynasty And Almohad Caliphate And Al-Bayan Al-Mugrib, Rolando J. Gutierrez

CMC Senior Theses

This study seeks to clarify the identities of the Almoravid and Almohad Berber movements in the larger Crusade narrative. The two North African Islamic groups are often carelessly placed within the group identified as “Islam” in discussions about the series of military campaigns that took place not only in the traditional Holy Land but also throughout regions of the Mediterranean such as Spain; this generalized identifier of “Islam” is placed against a much more complex group of generally Christian parties, all of them seen as separate, unique groups under the umbrella identifier of Christianity. This foray into a late 13 …

The Dartmouth Brut: Conservation, Authenticity, Dissemination, Deborah Howe, Michelle R. Warren

Dartmouth Scholarship

This essay describes the conservation process of the Dartmouth Brut manuscript: Dartmouth College, Rauner Special Collections Library, MS 003183. The format alternates between the observations and descriptions of the conservator, Deborah Howe, and those of medievalists Michelle Warren. The essay includes photos of Deborah's process in making a fragile fifteenth-century manuscript useable in the twenty-first century.

Questing The Beast: From Malory To Milton, Malorie A. Sponseller

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

The Questing Beast is a Medieval creature that has received little scholarly attention. Because of her labile nature, she is difficult to identify and therefore challenging to study. When previously analyzed, she has been considered only in her Medieval context. By comparing the Questing Beast from Perlesvaus, the Post-Vulgate Cycle, and the Prose Tristan, four identifying characteristics can be found: she is symbolic, she is multi-formed, she is a mother that gives birth, and she produces a barking noise most often made by her unborn young. Of these four signs, the last is the most prevalent and identifiable. …

Gratian And The Jews, Kenneth Pennington

Scholarly Articles

Since Anders Winroth and Carlos Larrainzar discovered earlier versions of Gratian’s Decretum, legal historians have explored these manuscripts for evidence that they hoped would reveal how Gratian’s changes and additions to his text could provide insights into how his thought and ideas developed.

Although there is still a vigorous debate about exactly how the manuscript tradition reflects the evolution of his Decretum, we know far more about Gratian now than we did before. Not everyone agrees on what we know. I think that Gratian began teaching in the 1120s, that the Saint Gall manuscript 673 is the earliest witness to …

Gratian And Compurgation: An Interpolation, Kenneth Pennington

Scholarly Articles

The search for the earliest manuscripts of the Vulgate text of Gratian’s Decretum can be aided by two textual variants that are important guides to deciding which manuscripts are the earliest versions of his text. Undoubtedly with more research others will be found. The first was discovered more than 25 years ago. Gratian had included a small section of Justinian’s Institutes in his Tractatus de legibus, D.12 c.6:

Diuturni mores consensu utentium approbati legem imitantur.

In the earliest manuscripts of the Vulgate, the text remained intact. Early on, however, the canonist interpolated the phrase, ‘nisi legi sunt adversi’, after ‘mores’. …

Moderamen Inculpatae Tutelae: The Jurisprudence Of A Justifiable Defense, Kenneth Pennington

Scholarly Articles

Intentionality and proportionality enter the jurisprudence dealing with rights of defense at the end of the third century of the common era. A rescript of the emperors Diocletian and Maximian to a certain Theodorus in 290 A.D. resolved a legal issue that had arisen from a court case. The question sent to the imperial court must have been: what kind of a defense a person can use if a robber attempts to take his property away. The imperial court’s response coined a new term, “moderamen inculpatae tutelae” that had never been used before, at least not in the sources that …