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Medieval Books for Christmas

Medievalists.net — Mon, 15 Dec 2014 19:16:54 +0000

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!

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Guilt and Creativity in the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer

Medievalists.net — Tue, 02 Sep 2014 16:50:55 +0000

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.

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Real and imaginary journeys in the later Middle Ages

Medievalists.net — Mon, 01 Sep 2014 20:18:16 +0000

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.

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‘That melodious linguist’: Birds in Medieval Christian and Islamic Cosmography

Medievalists.net — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 15:32:01 +0000

“Birds,” writes Albertus Magnus, “generally call more than other animals. This is due to the lightness of their spirits.”

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Avignon vs. Rome: Dante, Petrarch, Catherine of Siena

Medievalists.net — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 23:22:12 +0000

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.

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The dissemination of visions of the otherworld in England and northern France c.1150-c.1321

Medievalists.net — Tue, 14 Jan 2014 23:23:15 +0000

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).

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Sylvia Plath’s Use of Dantean Structure

Medievalists.net — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 23:31:40 +0000

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.

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Trees of Gold. Royal Adaptations of Paradise in Dante’s Purgatory

Medievalists.net — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 18:13:13 +0000

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.

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Death and Retribution: Medieval Visions of the End of Judas the Traitor

Medievalists.net — Mon, 23 Sep 2013 23:44:13 +0000

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.

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The Legend of the Purgatory of Saint Patrick: From Ireland to Dante and Beyond

Medievalists.net — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 13:21:27 +0000

“Yes by Saint Patrick .... Touching this vision here It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you” (Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5)

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