Love is in the air! Here are a few medieval books on the topic of love for your Valentine.
Figures of Evil in Old English Poetry
January 25, 2014 By
One of the ways, according to the Church Fathers, in which those guilty of mortal sin manifested their spiritual corruption was in their perverted imitation of the good.
The Canterbury Tales as Framed Narratives
January 25, 2014 By
Although I think that the notion of modern art as organic must be qualified and questioned, there is a certain force and validity to Jordan’s distinction between medieval and modern art. Modern art expects the parts to be somewhat subordinate to the whole. The dominant stress of New Criticism was on the organic nature of art.
Depictions of the Scots in the Arthurian Legend
January 22, 2014 By
Depictions of the Scots in the Arthurian Legend Diana Jefferies Journal of the Sydney Society for Scottish History: Vol 14 (2013) Abstract This paper will explore how motifs of Scotland and Scottishness are portrayed in medieval versions of the Arthurian Legend. I will discuss how the context of what is alleged to be the first […]
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).
Parzival, the perfect Medieval hero?
January 11, 2014 By
When we now think of knights, we automatically think of knights in shining armours, saving damsels in distress while killing dragons and other mythical creatures. But is this image we have of these heroes correct? Was the Medieval hero really just a tough guy who saved beautiful ladies and killed the ´bad guys´. In this paper I will try to give a standard description of what a Medieval hero really was. After which I will try to determine if Parzival really was a medieval hero, compared to the standards that I have tried to set.
Children and Literature in Medieval England
January 10, 2014 By
Deals with childrens’ literature in medieval England. Kinds of literature heard by children in England; Examples of rhymes used by medieval children; Ways of linking rhymes with children.
Who cursed whom, and when? The cursing of the hoard and Beowulf’s fate
January 7, 2014 By
The article provides an interpretation to lines 3051-3075 of the epic poem “Beowulf,” concerning the death of Beowulf and the curse on the dragon’s treasure. It outlines the actions contained in the passage, including Beowulf’s slaying of a dragon, his mortal wound, and the actions of his people following his death. It discusses various translations and readings of the passage, and focuses particularly on readings of the curse on the dragon’s hoard.
Maria Mediatrix: Mediating the Divine in the Devotional Literature of Late Medieval and Early Modern England
January 1, 2014 By
In medieval theology, Mary‘s body, as the physical site of the Incarnation, provided an opportunity for speculation about the relationship between divinity and humanity…An examination of how Marian imagery is used as a rhetorical and meditative device in devotional texts will shed light on the way the relationship between human body and divine spirit was experienced.
Towards A Poetics of Marvellous Spaces in Old and Middle English Narrative
January 1, 2014 By
I argue that the heart of this poetics of marvellous spaces is displacement. Their wonder and dread comes from boundaries that these places blur and cross, from the resistance of these places to being known or mapped, and from the deliberate distancing between these places and the home of their texts.
Cheating and Cheaters in German Romance and Epic, 1180 – 1225
December 31, 2013 By
An Alsatian poet named Heinrich, writing around 1180, composed a beast epic, based on French sources, about a trickster fox named Reinhart. Some sixty years later, a poet known to us only as Der Stricker composed a work of similar length and structure, about a trickster priest named Amis, and his diligent efforts to cheat various anonymous individuals out of their money.
A Postmodem Look at a Medieval Poet: The Case of William Dunbar
December 26, 2013 By
Recently, Umberto Eco, that well-known postmodemist critic/writer, has lamented that “‘postmodem’ is a term bon atout jaire. I have the impres- sion that it is applied today to anything the user happens to like.
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.
The Crown in the Nibelungenlied
November 24, 2013 By
Among the many unsolved problems which continue to exercise the mind of the student of the the one receiving directly Nibelunmgenlied, and indirectly the greatest attention today is that of the positiontaken by the Nibelungenlied in relation to the other poetical works of the period in which it was given its final form.
“The Taint of a Fault”: Purgatory, Relativism and Humanism in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
November 21, 2013 By
“The Taint of a Fault”: Purgatory, Relativism and Humanism in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Bill Phillips Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses, No. 17 (2004) Abstract Far from being a poem about the chivalric code, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is essentially concerned with religion. The Romance genre is used to reveal the shortcomings […]
Gower’s “Confessio” and the “Nova statuta Angliae”: royal lessons in English law
November 13, 2013 By
In the following discussion, I will explore some hitherto unexamined links between the Confessio Amantis and one of these legal texts, the Nova Statuta Angliae or New Statutes of England, which circulated among professional and non-professional readers in the 1380s and 1390s and which Richard II received in a manuscript now in Cambridge: St. John’s College MS A.7.
Seasonal Setting and the Human Domain in Early English and Early Scandinavian Literature
November 10, 2013 By
Seasonal Setting and the Human Domain in Early English and Early Scandinavian Literature Paul Sander Langeslag University of Toronto: Doctor of Philosophy, Centre for Medieval Studies (2012) Abstract The contrast between the familiar social space and the world beyond has been widely recognised as an organising principle in medieval literature, in which the natural and the […]
Literature, Logic and Mathematics in the Fourteenth Century
September 27, 2013 By
This thesis assesses the extent to which fourteenth-century Middle English poets were interested in, and influenced by, traditions of thinking about logic and mathematics.
Time, consciousness and narrative play in late Medieval secular dream poetry and framed narratives
September 26, 2013 By
This thesis proposes to look at the equation between time and text in the later medieval period. Time-telling and tale-telling have a particularly dynamic relationship in the considers time-telling and temporal referencein an era (c.1230 – 1500) that time-measurement multiple cultural experiencesa greatvariety of types of and
attitudes to time.
Poultry and Predators in Two Poems From the Reign of Charlemagne
September 24, 2013 By
Poultry and Predators in Two Poems From the Reign of Charlemagne By Jan Ziolkowski Denver Quarterly Volume 24, no. 3 (1990) Introduction: Were there animals in the myths, trickster tales, and fables told by the neolithic people who painted bison and deer on cave walls? Whatever the answer, there can be no doubt that animals […]
Shadow and Paradoxes of Darkness in Old English and Old Norse Poetic Language
September 20, 2013 By
This thesis confronts, explores, and attempts to meaningfully interpret a surprising nexus of stimulating cruces and paradoxes in Old English poetry and prose and Old Norse skaldic and Eddic poetry.
When Latin gets sick: mocking medical language in macaronic poetry
August 27, 2013 By
Since, at the time of the rise of macaronic poetry, Latin was the language of learn- ing, including medicine, it is expected that an analysis of the Latin in macaronic poetry and its interaction with other linguistic varieties in the same, can reveal changes in the relative social position of various groups.
Wild woman and her sisters in medieval English literature
August 18, 2013 By
The subject of this work is the concept and figure of the Wild Woman. The primary focus will be on various forms this figure assumes in medieval English literature: Grendel’s mother—the second monster Beowulf faces—and Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, along with other figures.
The Dragon and the Storm The Saracen anti-knight in Orlando furioso and Gerusalemme liberata
August 2, 2013 By
The Dragon and the Storm The Saracen anti-knight in Orlando furioso and Gerusalemme liberata Cam Lindley Cross University of Chicago, March 8 (2011) Abstract When Peter the Venerable commissioned Robert of Ketton to translate the Qur’an in 1142 CE, under the title Lex Mahumet pseudoprophete, it was with done for the express purpose of refuting Islamic doctrine […]
Mapping Scottish Identity in the Roman de Fergus
July 24, 2013 By
In the Roman de Fergus, a thirteenth-century verse romance in Old French, Guillaume le Clerc considers the consequences of Arthur’s assimilationist expansionism with a more focused attention to cultural difference and personal identity, again centered on the experience of a knight from Galloway, the eponymous
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