“The World on the End of a Reed”: Marguerite Porete and the annihilation of an identity in medieval and modern representations – a reassessment
Central to the aims of this thesis is the question “how did Porete „fit‟ the religious landscape of her period?” A seeming obstacle to this pursuit are claims from within the scholarship that Porete did not „fit‟ at all, but was, rather, as an aberration amidst other female mystics of the period.
Troubadours and their heritage in the edges of Europe – Singing and rapping experiences of being in a minority in Southern France and in Sámiland
What is common to these artists is the way how they define and express their belonging to their own ethnic group. The characteristics of their ethnic identity 2 are above all else language, home territory, and history.
Chivalry, Adultery, Ambiguity: The Image of Tristan and Isolde in Medieval Art
Tristan and Isolde is an Arthurian legend, the origins of which predate Arthur’s Roundtable. Scholars generally agree that the story of Tristan and Isolde is Celtic in origin.
The debate on the Epistolae duorum amantium. Current status
The methodological questions at stake are much more important and interesting. To quote the initial words of P. von Moos’ monumental article, these documents represent a real challenge for medievalism.
Christine de Pizan and Jean Gerson on the Body Politic: The Limits of Intellectual Influence?
The present paper represents a small attempt to test competing hypotheses about the substance of the intellectual friendship between Christine and Jean by examining one overlapping theme in their respective body of writings: the organic metaphor between the human body and the political community.
The Legend of Kosovo
The earliest traces of the Kosovo legend can be found in texts dating from the end of the fourteenth century. The legend evolved gradually so that by the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century it had already taken shape, and in texts of the eighteenth century it can be found in its complete form.
The Wife’s Lament: A Poem of the Living Dead
I tell this tale about my sorrowfulness / About my own fate. That I may speak of / What misfortunes I have endured since I grew up / New or old, never more than now.
And He Honoured Þat Hit Hade Euermore After’: The Influence of Richard II’s Livery System on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The theoretical framework for my analysis of Richard II’s use of iconic signs was largely drawn from the works of Charles Peirce, Umberto Eco, and the studies of the iconography of kingship by Louis Marin.
Dreaming of dwarves: Nightmares and Shamanism in Anglo-Saxon Poetics and the Wid Dweorh Charm
Psychological and psychiatric ailments must have baffled early medical practitioners.
Ingeld and Christ: A Medieval Problem
Students of Beowulf are familiar with the notion that the poem can be read as an attempt to answer Alcuin’s question, ‘Quid enim Hinieldus cum Christo?’ (What has Ingeld to do with Christ?).
Beowulf, Orality and the Anglo-Saxon Conversion
There is no source quite like the Beowulf manuscript, as it is the longest poem and the only epic composed in Old English which has survived to the modern era, and thus is central to any understanding of Anglo-Saxon literature.
Producing the Middle English Corpus: Confession and Medieval Bodies
In Producing the Middle English Corpus: Confession and Medieval Bodies, I argue that confessional discourse played an important role in the creation of the Middle English canon.
Saint by Association: Samson, Thomas Becket, and Simon de Montfort
The seemingly unusual companionship of Samson (of Samson and Delilah fame), Thomas Becket, the murdered Archbishop of Canterbury, and Simon de Montfort, the leader of the Barons War, has come about, for this paper, because of their mutual presence in the British Library’s Harley Manuscript 978.
Natural Qualifications of a Medieval Poet According to Moshe Ibn Ezra
The most important attainment of the Arabs, in Ibn Ezra’s opinion, is the distinction they achieved in the field of rhetoric.
Lovesickness in “Troilus”
The history of lovesickness in the Middle Ages is the record of physicians’ attempts to understand what happens to the body and the mind when passion renders a lover a patient.
Trobairitz Women Poets from Early Twelfth-Century Southern France
This video was recorded for students in the Fall 2011 GER 160D ‘Eroticism and Love in the Middle Ages’ class.
Words and music in communion: an analysis of Guillaume de Machaut’s “Le Lay de la Fonteinne” in cultural context
In this thesis, I shall attempt to define and then analyze the multiple elements present in Guillaume de Machaut’s “Le Lay de la fonteinne,”especially those elements that encapusulate the medieval myth of secular divinity.
The Poet and the Spae-Wife: An Attempt to Reconstruct Al-Ghazal’s Embassy to the Vikings
Before Dozy’s work,only excerpts from ibn-Dihya in incomplete shape had been known from the writings of the seventeenth-century Maghribi man of letters, al-Maqqari…