Medieval Studies Commons^™

Tolkien Fanzine Dataset, 1967-2017 [Bulk 1969-1979], Robinson Ensz, Gabriel Marotto, Aidan Oakey, Ivy Stanich, Ethan Thomas

Tolkien Resources

This dataset reveals the heretofore hidden contents of fan magazines (fanzines) related to the works of J.R.R. Tolkien that were created from 1969 through the publication of Tolkien’s The Silmarillion in 1977. It supplements the earlier Tolkien Fandom Review by S. Gary Hunnewell that discussed fanzines created through 1968. The dataset provides an item level index of the fanzines’ content and is intended to aid researchers in Fan Studies. It is accompanied by an inventory document that lists the fanzine titles and provides brief notes about some of them. Data was drawn from Marquette’s large holding of Tolkien fanzines, including …

Antiphons Of Iron And Blood: The Inspirations Of Tolkien's Poetry, Patrick J. Lyon

Journal of Tolkien Research

The new book, The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond, is a fascinating new look into a trove of previously unpublished Tolkien poetry. One of these new poems, “Ferrum et Sanguis,” includes an interesting series of addenda and subtitles written by Tolkien that give insight into the origins and inspirations for the poem. Furthermore, the interpretation given by the editors in their commentary on the poem misses the specific reference and applies it to a different source. The real source for the poem is very likely found in the Advent Vespers of the …

A Translation Of John Gower's Cronica Tripertita, Robert J. Meindl, Mark T. Riley

Accessus

John Gower's account of the last years of Richard II presents an uncompromised condemnation of the king's reign.

The Enduring Enigma Of Tom Bombadil: From Riddlic Styling To Metaphorical Encounter, Derek Simon

Journal of Tolkien Research

Conversationalists and critics alike continue to take delight in Tom Bombadil, yet remain perplexed by his enduring enigma. Interpretive positioning appears to be determined by the semantics of the term enigma deployed and how it intersects with any of the several textual standpoints adopted. The primary contention of this article is that the enigma is intentionally both a riddle (noun) and a riddling (verb). Reading the enigma through literary features of the Old English riddle-song can yield an alternate interpretation of Tom Bombadil that has received scant attention in critical commentary. In support of this contention, I propose to read …

John Gower: The Minor Latin Works, Robert J. Meindl, Mark T. Riley

Accessus

A translation, with introductions, of the minor Latin works of John Gower.

Ritual, Spectacle, And Theatre In Late Medieval Seville (Chapter 1), Christopher B. Swift

Publications and Research

From the fall of Islamic Išbīliya in 1248 to the conquest of the New World, Seville was a nexus of economic and religious power where interconfessional living among Christians, Jews, and Muslims was negotiated on public stages. From out of seemingly irreconcilable ideologies of faith, hybrid performance culture emerged in spectacles of miraculous transformation, disciplinary processionals, and representations of religious identity. Ritual, Spectacle, and Theatre in Late Medieval Seville reinvigorates the study of medieval Iberian theater by revealing the ways in which public expressions of devotion, penance, and power fostered cultural reciprocity, rehearsed religious difference, and ultimately helped establish Seville …

Language And Meter, Ian Cornelius

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

From a visual standpoint as well as a semantic and functional one, Middle English lyrics were often absorbed into their co(n)texts. In what sense, then, is a “Middle English lyric” a thing? I seek in this essay to show what metrical analysis may contribute to that question. Context is not all. If contextual analysis has tended to dissolve the presumed thing-hood of Middle English lyrics, metrical analysis shows that verses are robust enough to sustain that. Metrical structuration sets verse apart from its surround; it defines the verse object as a distinct entity, distinguished by a specifiable compositional craft.

Langland Parrhesiastes, Ian Cornelius

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The ancient Greek word parrhēsia designates speech that is bold, frank, and free, holding nothing back; a parrhēsiastēs is a person who gives voice to such speech. Although the word was little used in Latin literature and had no precise Latin equivalent, the concept was transmitted to medieval western Europe in rhetorical theory and the New Testament. In this essay I propose that the concept of parrhēsia may help to register the irruptive force, pointedness, risks, and complexity of certain acts of saying in Piers Plowman, a fourteenth-century English vision poem. For most of this essay, I focus on a …

Postmodern Poetry And Queer Medievalisms: Time Mechanics, David Hadbawnik

New Queer Medievalisms

This volume builds on recent scholarship on contemporary poetry in relation to medieval literature, focusing on postmodern poets who work with the medieval in a variety of ways. Such recent projects invert or “queer” the usual transactional nature of engagements with older forms of literature, in which readers are asked to exchange some small measure of bewilderment at archaic language or forms for a sense of having experienced a medieval text. The poets under consideration in this volume demand that readers grapple with the ways in which we are still “medieval” – in other words, the ways in which the …

The Gaelic Background Of Old English Poetry Before Bede, Colin A. Ireland

Richard Rawlinson Center Series

Seventh-century Gaelic law-tracts delineate professional poets (filid) who earned high social status through formal training. These poets cooperated with the Church to create an innovative bilingual intellectual culture in Old Gaelic and Latin. Bede described Anglo-Saxon students who availed themselves of free education in Ireland at this culturally dynamic time. Gaelic scholars called sapientes (“wise ones”) produced texts in Old Gaelic and Latin that demonstrate how Anglo-Saxon students were influenced by contact with Gaelic ecclesiastical and secular scholarship. Seventh-century Northumbria was ruled for over 50 years by Gaelic-speaking kings who could access Gaelic traditions. Gaelic literary traditions provide …

Between The Lines: Reflexive Misogyny And Remediated Forms In A Secret Online Group Of Women Poets, Rae Elizabeth Snobl

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This thesis examines an online, secret writing community for 1,800+ women-only poets called “The Retreat.” Analysis of two years of Facebook posts and interviews with group members revealed a noticeable membership split between those publishing through conventional literary venues, the “traditional poets,” and social media poets. These “Instapoets,” as labeled by popular media each had between 10,000 to 125,000+ followers on sites like Instagram and Facebook—significant numbers when seen in the context of readership and monetizing. Yet, their digital, snippet poems did not hold to the literary norms of poetry, both in form and publishing method. This led to a …

Middle English "Tarantulas": A New Edition Of The Destruction Of Jerusalem, Kara Mcshane

Faculty Baden Presentations

In this Baden presentation, Kara McShane gives an overview of her forthcoming edition of the understudied Middle English Destruction of Jerusalem, a late medieval siege narrative, and explores how the poem expands contemporary understandings of religious and cultural contact, conflict, and exchange in medieval English literature. The talk includes an interactive introduction to editing medieval texts.

Reconsidering ‘Soul And Body Ii’: Who Is Culpable For Their Combined Fate?, Sarah Jaran

Masters Theses

Soul and Body II has been considered for many years by scholars to be a less doctrinally complex poem compared to later versions of the topos. Superficially, the poem seems to blame the body fully for the shared doomed fate of the body and soul because the majority of the poem is a speech by the soul claiming that much. I propose in this study, however, that the poet created a dual message for the audience of Soul and Body II. While the easy and more superficial message is that the body is at fault for the damnation of …

Calling All Corpses: An Examination Of The Treatment Of The Dead In Old English Literature, Jessica Troy

English Language and Literature ETDs

The care and disposal of the dead bodies, an unavoidable reminder of one’s mortality, rarely receives in-depth literary attention. In early medieval England, the Anglo-Saxons dealt with corpses but seldom discussed the undertaking in written documents. Instead they focused on the grandiose deeds of heroes like Beowulf and the holy lives of revered saints.

This dissertation examines various genres of Old English literature to identify times when authors discuss corpses and to what end these discussions led. Hagiographers, for example, describe the corpses of certain saints such as Æthelthryth and Edmund at length while the bodies of other saints are …

The Shapes Of Early English Poetry: Style, Form, History, Eric Weiskott, Irina Dumitrescu

Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

This volume contributes to the study of early English poetics. In these essays, several related approaches and fields of study radiate outward from poetics, including stylistics, literary history, word studies, gender studies, metrics, and textual criticism. By combining and redirecting these traditional scholarly methods, as well as exploring newer ones such as object-oriented ontology and sound studies, these essays demonstrate how poetry responds to its intellectual, literary, and material contexts. The contributors propose to connect the small (syllables, words, and phrases) to the large (histories, emotions, faiths, secrets). In doing so, they attempt to work magic on the texts they …

Burnt Lavender & Other Remnants, Danielle Airen Pringle

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The following is an essay on the craft of poetry. It talks about influences for poetry writing including other poets, history, music, and the poet’s personal life, as well as the process of writing poetry throughout the poet’s life. The work focuses on how her poetry has developed and what she is trying to accomplish with her poetry in regards to women, power, and desire. The poems are usually persona poems written from the perspectives of medieval women (either real or imagined) and a few of her own personal poems. A sample of some of the poems are included here. …

"So Vexed Me The Þouȝtful Maladie": Public Presentation Of The Private Self In Hoccleve's My Compleinte And The Conpleynte Paramont, Lauren M. Silverio

Honors Scholar Theses

The scholarship surrounding the life and work of Thomas Hoccleve is relatively young and lean compared to the tomes of knowledge that have been circulated about the slightly older and vastly more popular Geoffrey Chaucer. Up until the second half of the 20th century, Hoccleve came through history with the unfortunate moniker of the "lesser Chaucer." What this insult neglects, however, is that Hoccleve was more than just a lowly clerk who spent his days admiring and emulating the so-called Father of English Literature. Thomas Hoccleve deserves recognition for conceiving and creating works that are impressive both in their form …

Productive Destruction: Torture, Text, And The Body In The Old English 'Andreas', Christopher R. Fee

English Faculty Publications

Writing in the Old English Andreas is at once both a productive and a destructive activity. We first become aware of the dangerous power of the written word quite early in the poem, when we learn that the Mermedonians have subverted the normally productive activity of writing into a tool for calculating the execution dates of their prisoners (134-37). Later, the words uttered by the devil to incite the Mermedonians against Andreas illuminate the lexical relationship between the destructive nature of writing and the productive nature of torture in the semiotic context of the poem. Finally, in a sort of …