Women in Troubadour Song: Of the Comtessa and the Vilana
Since we have melodies for both songs, the question of what “feminine” voices we are hearing is a musi- cal as well as a poetic issue.
Aspects of the English royal succession, 1066-1199: the death of the king
The death of any ruler in the twelfth century, even if it were expected, caused a considerable amount of shock and disquiet amongst those who were left behind.
The Cross as Tree: The Wood-of-the-Cross Legends in Middle English and Latin Texts in Medieval England
The wood-of-the-cross legend is actually a group of narratives that trace the pre- history of the wood used to make Christ’s cross back to Old Testament figures, or in some cases back to paradise itself.
Fleas, Flies, and Friars: Children’s Poetry from the Middle Ages
In Fleas, Flies, and Friars, Nicholas Orme, an expert on childhood in the Middle Ages, has gathered a wide variety of children’s verse that circulated in England beginning in the 1400s, providing a way for modern readers of all ages to experience the medieval world through the eyes of its children.
Looking Back: Medieval French Romance and the Dynamics of Seeing
This dissertation builds upon the work of feminist medievalists and other literary and cultural scholars to argue that sight, and objects that are seen, articulate love relationships between characters in medieval romances, and that seeing is frequently a locus of resistance to gender norms the texts both establish and refuse to accept.
Tolkien’s Heroic Criticism: A Developing Application of Anglo-Saxon Ofermod to the Monsters of Modernity
The structure of this study follows the development of Tolkien’s social criticism and heroic aesthetic. The study begins by looking at some biographical elements of Tolkien’s life and how those elements shaped the creation of Tolkien’s anti-hero, the Hobbit.
Talk to the Dragon: Tolkien as Translator
When Bilbo, and the readers of The Hobbit, are confronted with the dragon, they are in for a surprise, as Smaug’s behaviour is somewhat unusual for a dragon.
”Beowulf” and the Influence of Old English on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings is set in the fictional but incredibly vast and detailed universe of Middle-Earth. Tolkien has put great effort in developing an impossibly gigantic realm peopled by many diverse races. Of the immeasurable number of characters and locations present in Tolkien’s work, many bear a name deeply rooted in Old English.
A Single Leaf: Tolkien’s Visual Art and Fantasy
With such a model in mind, then, we have entered into a discussion of art, myth‐making, and the Primary World from a combined academic and artistic perspective.
Sacrificial and Un-sacrificial Epics: An Examination of El Cid
I want to focus my attention here in another text, the Lay of el Cid, the only fully preserved Castilian epic poem.
John Lydgate and the Poetics of Fame
Read our interview with Mary C. Flannery about her new book
Haraldr the Hard-Ruler and his poets
If Haraldr’s contemporaries and the early writers did not know him as hardradi, what did they call him?
‘In the Beginning’: The London Medieval Graduate Network Inaugural Conference
This is a summary of the The London Medieval Graduate Network Inaugural Conference by Rachel Scott. The conference was held on November 2nd at King’s College London.
Sacrilege, Sacrifice and John Barbour’s Bruce
The narrative accomplished on this plane is critical to the foundation, or re-foundation, of royal order after a usurpation, yet it is more than a dynastic expedient;3 rather, it is a story that, even as it bridges the gaps in credibility and legitimacy attendant upon a new royal line, primally reinforces the governing fictions of kingship as an institution.
A Question of Truth: Barbour’s Bruce, Hary’s Wallace and Richard Coer de Lion
Tempting though it is to assume that these poems are simply peculiarly Scots, to do so denies them their place in British literature. A survey of English romances, moreover, reveals what appears to be an English equivalent: Richard Coer de Lion. It is also a hybrid poem about a recent king and military leader.
Re-writing discourse features: speech acts in Heliand
Though extremely fascinating and very appealing, the theory of the saxonization and northernization of the Gospel has ended up permeating every single level upon which an analysis of the poem can be carried out, becoming a sort of a priori starting point that may lead scholars to over-interpretation and, therefore, hinder them from developing a perhaps deeper insight into the poem.
Draumkvedet and the Medieval English Dream Vision: A Study of Genre
The Medieval English dream vision evidence influences from a variety of earlier vision literature, notably the apocalyptic vision and narrative dream.
From Jongleur to Minstrel: The Professionalization of Secular Musicians in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Paris
This study asks: how did jongleurs professionalize over the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and incorporate themselves into society as legitimate, productive members?
Running Widdershins Round Middle Earth: Why Teaching Tolkien Matters
Returning to Tolkien’s allegory, it is clear that he suggests that his fellow medievalists have taken a work of great imaginative and artistic power, and instead of using it to “see the sea”, they have mined it for words and phrases, and pulled it apart, looking for bits and pieces from other ancient works, and even reworked it after their own notions of how it “ought” to be built.
The Rare Oxford Machzor Vitry: A Rosh Hashana essay
The Machzor Vitry work is, as mentioned above, not just a prayer book but includes much more, including many laws and a commentary. It consists of three portions; the halakhic legal portion, the liturgical formulae, and commentaries to the prayers taken from the aggadah.
The Virtuous Pagan in Middle English Literature
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.
What Was Viking Poetry For?
The most characteristic kind of verse that has been preserved from the Viking Age is praise poetry — praise either of the living or of the recently dead…
The True Characters of Criseyde and of Diomede in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde: A Restoration of the Reputations of Two Misunderstood Characters Unjustly Maligned in Literary Criticism
This is a defence of the characters of Criseyde and of Diomede based, inter alia, on a close textual analysis.
The Virtues of Balm in the Late Medieval Period
The nature of balsam and its qualities, especially the ability to act as an extraordinarily effective preservative, demands further inquiry. Is this Lydgate’s invention, or instead a reflection of late medieval ideas about a particular natural substance?