Medieval commentaries on the origin and history of language used biblical history, from Creation to the Tower of Babel, as their starting-point, and described the progressive impairment of an originally perfect language. Biblical and classical sources raised questions for both medieval poets and commentators about the nature of language, its participation in the Fall, and its possible redemption. John M. Fyler focuses on how three major poets - Chaucer, Dante, and Jean de Meun - participated in these debates about language. He offers new analysis of how the history of language is described...
Medieval commentaries on the origin and history of language used biblical history, from Creation to the Tower of Babel, as their starting-point, and d...
The arguments used to justify the deposition of Richard II in 1399 created new forms of political discussion which developed alongside new expectations of kingship itself and which shaped political action and debate for centuries to come. This interdisciplinary study analyses the political language and literature of the early Lancastrian period, particularly the reigns of Henry IV (1399 1413) and Henry V (1413 1422). Lancastrian authors such as Thomas Hoccleve and the authors of the anonymous works Richard the Redeless, Mum and the Sothsegger and Crowned King made creative use of languages...
The arguments used to justify the deposition of Richard II in 1399 created new forms of political discussion which developed alongside new expectation...
The century and a half following the Norman Conquest of 1066 saw an explosion in the writing of Latin and vernacular history in England, while the creation of the romance genre reinvented the fictional narrative. Where critics have seen these developments as part of a cross-Channel phenomenon, Laura Ashe argues that a genuinely distinctive character can be found in the writings of England during the period. Drawing on a wide range of historical, legal and cultural contexts, she discusses how writers addressed the Conquest and rebuilt their sense of identity as a new, united 'English' people,...
The century and a half following the Norman Conquest of 1066 saw an explosion in the writing of Latin and vernacular history in England, while the cre...
Throughout the Middle Ages, the number of female readers was far greater than is commonly assumed. D. H. Green shows that, after clerics and monks, religious women were the main bearers of written culture and its expansion. Moreover, laywomen played a vital part in the process whereby the expansion of literacy brought reading from religious institutions into homes, and increasingly from Latin into vernacular languages. This study assesses the various ways in which reading was practised between c.700 and 1500 and how these differed from what we mean by reading today. Focusing on Germany,...
Throughout the Middle Ages, the number of female readers was far greater than is commonly assumed. D. H. Green shows that, after clerics and monks, re...
The Bible was translated into English for the first time in the late 1300s by John Wyclif and his supporters. In the first study of the Wycliffite Bible for nearly a century, Mary Dove explains why people wanted an English translation, why many clergy opposed the idea, and why the Church's attempt to censor the translation was unsuccessful. Based on intensive study of the surviving manuscripts, Dove takes the reader through every step of the conception, design and execution of the first English Bible. Illuminating examples are included at every point, and textual analyses and a complete...
The Bible was translated into English for the first time in the late 1300s by John Wyclif and his supporters. In the first study of the Wycliffite Bib...
Little attention has been paid to the political and ideological significance of the exemplum, a brief narrative form used to illustrate a moral. Through a study of four major works in the Chaucerian tradition (The Canterbury Tales, John Gower??'s Confessio Amantis, Thomas Hoccleve??'s Regement of Princes, and Lydgate??'s Fall of Princes), Scanlon redefines the exemplum as a ???narrative enactment of cultural authority???. He traces its development through the two strands of the medieval Latin tradition which the Chaucerians appropriate: the sermon exemplum, and the public exemplum of the...
Little attention has been paid to the political and ideological significance of the exemplum, a brief narrative form used to illustrate a moral. Throu...
Mary Carruthers s classic study of the training and uses of memory for a variety of purposes in European cultures during the Middle Ages has fundamentally changed the way scholars understand medieval culture. This fully revised and updated second edition considers afresh all the material and conclusions of the first. While responding to new directions in research inspired by the original, this new edition devotes much more attention to the role of trained memory in composition, whether of literature, music, architecture, or manuscript books. The new edition will reignite the debate on memory...
Mary Carruthers s classic study of the training and uses of memory for a variety of purposes in European cultures during the Middle Ages has fundament...
This book takes a unique look at the Latin Arthurian tradition, placing authors such as Geoffrey of Monmouth in the context of Latin histories, monastic chronicles, saints' lives, and other Latin prose Arthurian narratives. Placing them against a background of the Angevin court of Henry II, the book introduces a new set of texts into the Arthurian canon and suggests a way to understand their place in that tradition. The unfamiliar works are summarized for the reader, and there are extensive quotations, with translations, throughout.
This book takes a unique look at the Latin Arthurian tradition, placing authors such as Geoffrey of Monmouth in the context of Latin histories, monast...
