It’s that time of year again – the mad scramble for the perfect Christmas gift for the historian, nerd, avid reader on your list. Here are a few suggestions for you – new releases for December and January!
Guilt and Creativity in the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer
September 2, 2014 By
I argue that as Chaucer develops his own expansive, questioning poetics in The House of Fame and The Canterbury Tales, he problematises the principle of allegory on which the legitimacy of literary discourse was primarily based in medieval culture and the final fragments of The Canterbury Tales see Chaucer struggling, increasingly, to reconcile the boldness and independence of his poetic vision with the demands of his faith.
Real and imaginary journeys in the later Middle Ages
September 1, 2014 By
For a proper understanding of the actions of men in the past it is necessary to have some idea of how they conceived the world and their place in it, yet for the medieval period there is a serious inbalance in the sources.
‘That melodious linguist’: Birds in Medieval Christian and Islamic Cosmography
August 12, 2014 By
“Birds,” writes Albertus Magnus, “generally call more than other animals. This is due to the lightness of their spirits.”
Avignon vs. Rome: Dante, Petrarch, Catherine of Siena
March 12, 2014 By
In the fourteenth century the image of ancient Rome as Babylon was transformed into the positive idea of Rome as both a Christian and a classical ideal.
The dissemination of visions of the otherworld in England and northern France c.1150-c.1321
January 14, 2014 By
This thesis examines the dissemination of visions of the otherworld in the long thirteenth century (c.1150-1321) by analysing the work of one enthusiast for such visions, Helinand of Froidmont, and studying the later transmission of three, contrasting accounts: the vision of the monk of Eynsham (c.1196), the vision of St. Fursa (c.656) and the vision of Gunthelm (s.xiiex).
Sylvia Plath’s Use of Dantean Structure
December 10, 2013 By
Many people have remarked on the genius of Sylvia Plath’s poetry. However, it has come to my attention that Plath has been grossly misunderstood by her critics, such as the famous critic, Harold Bloom who left Plath out of his book The Western Canon.
Trees of Gold. Royal Adaptations of Paradise in Dante’s Purgatory
November 18, 2013 By
Dante’s vision of afterlife, expressed in his masterpiece the Divine Comedy, starts in the real world: he finds himself lost in a wood, as a metaphor of his difficult position in earthly life being exiled from his patria, the city of Florence.
Death and Retribution: Medieval Visions of the End of Judas the Traitor
September 23, 2013 By
Although being described in the Book of Job as “the land of gloom and chaos” (“terra ubi umbra mortis et nullus ordo” Iob 10:22), Hell for Christian tradition was not a region of disorder and chaos, but a realm of well ordered justice.
The Legend of the Purgatory of Saint Patrick: From Ireland to Dante and Beyond
March 17, 2013 By
“Yes by Saint Patrick …. Touching this vision here It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you” (Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5)
“I want what I cannot have”: Medieval Love Literature explained
February 13, 2013 By
Unlike today, when we expect romance to yield tangible results, bards of the Middle Ages who sang about their desires never expected their true love to reciprocate.
Dreaming in Dante’s Purgatorio
February 10, 2013 By
Three successive nights on the mountain of Purgatory, Dante pauses to rest, engaging in regenerative sleep. As he sleeps, he experiences three distinct morning-dreams, describing each in detail.
The Aeneid and The Inferno: Social Evolution
February 3, 2013 By
The similarity between Dante’s The Inferno and Book VI of Virgil’s The Aeneid is, in many cases, clear. Both stories are written as Epic journeys. The Aeneid follows the journey of Aeneas from a sacked Troy to Italy, where he begins a new life and starts to build a new city for the homeless Trojans.
The Satanic Phenomenon: Medieval Representations of Satan
October 30, 2012 By
The ever-evolving, interconnectedness of culture, religion, and superstition make for a truly unique theatrical experience in the middle ages. With limited understanding and access to scripture, medieval Christians generated a blended belief system, in order to make sense of the metaphysical world, which manifests itself in medieval drama‟s representations of Satan.
The Virtuous Pagan in Middle English Literature
September 14, 2012 By
From the first through the fourteenth centuries, a succession of solutions to the problem of these virtuous pagans evolved. For the Early Church, an attractive solution was that Christ descended into Hell to convert the souls he found there.
The Publisher Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari, Female Readers, and the Debate about Women in Sixteenth-Century Italy
June 14, 2012 By
Drawing on recent work on the social history of the book and the politics of reading, this essay considers the texts under question as social products, whose meaning is not just determined by the author’s initial intentions, but is further shaped in the process of production, dissemination, and reception as a result of negotiation among several parties in a given historical moment.
MyDante: An Online Environment for Contemplative and Collaborative Reading
May 30, 2012 By
This paper explores the tensions between individual and collaborative aspects of reading in the context of MyDante, a digital environment for the study of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Jerusalem in Medieval Christian Thought
April 29, 2012 By
In the prophetic tradition, the dwelling of God is understood as a spiritual one. Yet, in spite of the expressed manner in which Jerusalem was called The Holy City, an element of imperfection remained.
Why Dante damned Francesca da Rimini
April 9, 2012 By
The vast majority of Dante’s readers have found Francesca da Rimini an acutely sympathetic figure-a tragic heroine. Yet Dante damned her, pronouncing a stern and challenging moral judgment.
Reading about Lancelot in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde
April 5, 2012 By
This book is the central one of Troilus and Criseyde’s five books, with the sexual union of Troilus with Criseyde forming the climax and turning-point of the entire plot-structure, condensed at the start of the work by Chaucer in the words “fro woe to wele and after out of joie.”
Curses and laughter: The ethics of political invective in the comic poetry of high and late medieval Italy
April 4, 2012 By
Modern criticism tends to treat medieval invective as a playfully subversive but marginal poetic game with minimal ethical weight. Instead, I aim to restore these poetic productions to their original context: the history, law, and custom of Tuscan cities
Chaucer’s Inferno: Dantean Burlesques in The Canterbury Tales
February 27, 2012 By
Like Dante, Chaucer composed in the vernacular rather than in Latin, organized his work by means of the frame story of a guided pilgrimage, and included himself as a character in the journey that he describes. Yet Chaucer gives each of these elements a carnivalesque turn, so that the serious matter of Dante’s Commedia becomes, in The Canterbury Tales, the stuff of comedy.
Boccaccio, Cavalcanti’s Canzone “Donna me prega” and Dino’s Glosses
October 23, 2011 By
Boccaccio, Cavalcanti’s Canzone “Donna me prega” and Dino’s Glosses Usher, Jonathan (University of Edinburgh) Heliotropia 2.1 (2004) Abstract The enigmatic, indeed disturbing figure of Guido Cavalcanti (1259–1300) exercised the imagination of his contemporaries, especially of his fellow poets. Without naming him once, Dante talks about Guido in his youthful work, the Vita nuova, telling us […]
Beyond Beatrice: from Love Poetry to a Poetry of Love
October 9, 2011 By
Beyond Beatrice: from Love Poetry to a Poetry of Love By Brian Reynolds Paper given at the Fu Jen Fourth Annual Medieval Conference: Chivalry and Knighthood in Middle Ages (2003) Introduction: In this essay I shall consider how Dante combines elements from the Marian tradition with the conventions of courtly love in drawing together literary, […]
Matelda in the Terrestrial Paradise
October 9, 2011 By
Matelda in the Terrestrial Paradise By Diana Glenn Flinders University Languages Group Online Review, Vol.1:1 (2002) Abstract: This analysis of the enigmatic figure of Matelda, guardian of the Terrestrial Paradise in Dante’s Purgatorio, considers both the unresolved question of Matelda’s historical identity, in particular whether Dante is alluding to the historical personage, Countess Matilda of […]
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