Medieval clerics believed that original sin had rendered their "fallen bodies" vulnerable to corrupting impulses particularly those of a sexual nature. They feared that their corporeal frailty left them susceptible to demonic forces bent on penetrating and polluting their bodies and souls.
Drawing on a variety of canonical and other sources, "Fallen Bodies" examines a wide-ranging set of issues generated by fears of pollution, sexuality, and demonology. To maintain their purity, celibate clerics combated the stain of nocturnal emissions; married clerics expelled their wives onto the...
Medieval clerics believed that original sin had rendered their "fallen bodies" vulnerable to corrupting impulses particularly those of a sexual nat...
"This long-awaited book makes available an English translation of a set of texts which represents the most important collection of material on women's diseases and their treatments for the period from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries."--Social History of Medicine "Thanks to Monica H. Green's splendid new critical edition and translation . . . one of the toughest nuts of medieval medical learning has been cracked. . . . The introduction and translation are spirited and readable; both could be profitably assigned to undergraduates and would provide an excellent entry not only into...
"This long-awaited book makes available an English translation of a set of texts which represents the most important collection of material on women's...
In the late fourteenth century the complex Middle English word "trouthe," which had earlier meant something like "integrity" or "dependability," began to take on its modern sense of "conformity to fact." At the same time, the meaning of its antonym, "tresoun," began to move from "personal betrayal" to "a crime against the state." In A Crisis of Truth, Richard Firth Green contends that these alterations in meaning were closely linked to a growing emphasis on the written over the spoken and to the simultaneous reshaping of legal thought and practice.
According to Green, the...
In the late fourteenth century the complex Middle English word "trouthe," which had earlier meant something like "integrity" or "dependability," be...
Censure and Heresy at the University of Paris, 1200-1400 J. M. M. H. Thijssen "The book makes an important scholarly contribution. Thijssen puts academic censures in the context of ecclesiastical investigations of heresy and brings together the latest research on a number of specific Parisian cases and on the problem of academic censure."--W. J. Courtenay, University of Wisconsin, Madison For the scholastic philosopher William Ockham (c. 1285-1347), there are three kinds of heresy. The first, and most unmistakable, is an outright denial of the truths of faith. Another is so obvious that a...
Censure and Heresy at the University of Paris, 1200-1400 J. M. M. H. Thijssen "The book makes an important scholarly contribution. Thijssen puts acade...
Alliterative Revivals Christine Chism "A learned and witty book. . . . Alliterative Revivals is an important effort to bring to the study of these poems the concerns and methods which have transformed literary study in other periods and genres. The book shows courage and resourcefulness working around the gaps in our knowledge of the poems' origins and contexts. Its successes will no doubt encourage others to explore the possibilities of making late medieval literature speak to new concern in new voices."--ArthurianaAlliterative Revivals is the first full-length study of...
Alliterative Revivals Christine Chism "A learned and witty book. . . . Alliterative Revivals is an important effort to bring to the study of th...
The Romance of the Rose has been a controversial text since it was written in the thirteenth century. There is evidence for radically different readings as as early as the first half of the fourteenth century. The text provided inspiration for both courtly and didactic poets. Some read it as a celebration of human love; others as an erudite philosophical work; still others as a satirical representation of social and sexual follies. On one hand it was praised as an edifying treatise, on the other condemned as lascivious and misogynistic. Kevin Brownlee and Sylvia Huot and the...
The Romance of the Rose has been a controversial text since it was written in the thirteenth century. There is evidence for radically different...
