Suchergebnisse

Publisher description: Often misleadingly called the Dark Ages, the period between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance was a time of great creativity. The Middle Ages gave rise to some of the world's most enduring and influential literary works, including Dante's Commedia, Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, and a large body of Arthurian lore and legend. This reference is a comprehensive guide to literature written between 500 and 1500. While the volume is primarily devoted to the early literature of England, it also includes entries for historical persons and subjects of cultural relevance which would have been discussed in literary works or which might have affected their creation. Multicultural in scope, the book also covers Islamic, Hispanic, Celtic, Mongolian, Germanic, Italian, and Russian literature and culture of the Middle Ages. Longer entries provide thorough coverage of major English authors such as Chaucer and Malory, and of entire genres, such as drama, lyric, ballad, debate, saga, chronicle, and hagiography. Shorter entries examine particular literary works; significant kings, artists, explorers, and religious leaders; important themes, such as courtly love and chivalry; and major historical events, such as the Crusades. The entries are written by scholars and each entry concludes with a brief bibliography. The volume closes with a list of the most valuable general works for further reading.

Canacee's Mirror: Gender and Treason in Medieval Literature examines the multifaceted and constantly shifting definitions and applications of treason law in several key texts of the Middle Ages. Whether in the form of political treason or romantic infidelity, treason presents a serious problem, the very idea of it revealing anxieties about discerning truth, judging speech and appearances, and performing loyalty. These anxieties become most pointed when examined through the lens of gender. Each chapter moves chronologically through the shifts in French and English law, drawing on the work of legal scholars to explore Roman and Germanic antecedents as well as contemporary applications of treason law. The changes in the laws are reflected and refracted in medieval literature by the way individual authors and texts present nuanced and varying depictions of treason, betrayal, guilt, and truth. These nuances are magnified and complicated when the traitor in question is a woman, and thus the chapters alternate between analysis of both male and female traitors. While the charge of treason for men could be levied for deceptive disloyalty in either realm of the political or the romantic, as Ganelon shows on the one hand, and the men of The Legend of Good Women show on the other, for many women in the literature of the Middle Ages romantic treason necessarily involves a breach of political or feudal bonds as well. In general, with the notable exception of Lancelot, female characters such as Béroul's Iseut, Chaucer's Criseyde, and Malory's Guinevere demonstrate a much greater awareness of the repercussions of their betrayal, in both reputation and physical punishment, than their male counterparts. Each chapter, thus, examines the complicated nexus of expectations and behaviors with which medieval authors negotiated the definition, presentation, and consequences of treason for both men and women.

This thesis is the first sustained study of Christopher Marlowe's strategic handling of medieval literature. This study identifies and explores Marlowe's subversive use of a range of medieval material, both textual and cultural, in his dramas. In addition to identifying Marlowe's medieval sources, this thesis also delineates how this material was used: to offer a subtle and subversive critique of the core principles of Elizabethan ideology. After first establishing Marlowe's medieval sources, his "medieval library," this study then explores the ultra-specific application of this material across Marlowe's oeuvre. Close textual analysis of Marlowe's seven plays is the main methodology utilised in this study, facilitating the discovery of Marlowe's politic evocation of medieval literature. This thesis seeks to advance our understanding of Marlowe's subversive theatre by identifying his unique and subversive medievalism.

Maureen Fries's essay, although not about witches, expands upon Elizabeth Tucker's paper. The duality of women i n the literature examined by Fries show them to be virgin or whore: the woman saint is a model of such desirable qualities as chastity, obedience, and fortitude, while the fabliau woman uses her sexuality for fun and for profit. The literature, in both instances, depicts male values in a male world. Ultimately, the popular image of women can be distilled into the roles of Mary, wholly above feminine weakness, and Eve, who represents theopposite. Possibly the only "mixed" image is that of the Magdalene, who recalls the fallen Eve, but who also is transformed into the virtuous woman. The Lack of flexibility, not noted elsewhere in medieval literature, in the perception of medieval women suggests that we need to know more about the society of the Middle Ages and women's place in it.

Introduction: Wolframs-Eschenbach: a statue and a story -- Medievalism and memory -- Adapting medieval narratives -- A knight at the museum: medieval literature and/as local heritage at the Museum Wolfram von Eschenbach -- The machinery of myth: the Nibelung Museum and the interrogation of cultural memory -- Presencing the narrative past: old structures, new stories? -- The future of the past: medieval literature on display -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.

This dissertation compares the poetry of two political figures, the Buyid vizier al-Sahib Ibn 'Abbad (938-95 CE) and King Alfonso X of Castile (1221-84 CE). I argue that they produced poems to control elite discourse, managing rules of linguistic style and social decorum. In so doing, they ensured an obedient court. This technique is most evident in their authorship of ribald, slanderous poetry, which purported to break down social rules but in fact shaped and enforced the court's normative logic. Ibn 'Abbad, writing Classical Arabic poetry, did not seek to change preexisting notions of high and low speech; nor did Alfonso, who codified the Spanish language and was the most famous troubadour of Galician-Portuguese lyric. Instead, they recognized the utility of writing across the rhetorical spectrum of a courtly poetic tradition. Most of their political forebears and contemporaries limited themselves to writing such poetic motifs as panegyric, chaste love, and friendship. Invective poetry had been considered an outside force, a pastime of disgruntled or merely playful poets seeking to chide or manipulate the patron. Ibn 'Abbad and Alfonso made proprietary, authorial claims to scathing invective as well as grand praise, a combination that allowed them to dominate would-be opponents in the poetic field. I suggest that this dominance of language translates into political advantage, a sign of protection from opportunistic poets and a potential threat to enemies.Diverging from prior taxonomies of medieval literature, which station panegyric and invective as ethical opposites, I argue that the specific court politics of the Buyid and Castilian court resist this binary reading. The first chapter provides historical and linguistic accounts of the two empires, then details Ibn 'Abbad's and Alfonso's interventions therein. Because they took seemingly contradictory positions in their legislation, administrative prose, official correspondence, rhetoric, and poetry, their work forecloses certain broad arguments on ethics. This breach makes way for my epistemological discussion of poetic form, which connects the poetic analysis in chapters 2 and 3. The study then moves into a structural account of the poetic utterance. In chapter 4, I show how the social hierarchies invented in the poetic text push insistently outward, shifting our critical view toward the hierarchy of the court.