This book explores the metaphor of topography as a mechanism for the inscription of gender roles in Arthurian romance.

This title explores the historical and imaginary representation of the Saracen, or Muslim, in French writings from 1100 to 1500. Literary relationships between Christians and Muslims are placed side-by-side with historical accounts of changing socio-political interactions. It begins with the first epics, moving through troubadour poetry, romance epic and ending in romance.

Using a combination of formalist and psychology-based approaches, this work examines the triple knowledge of subjectivity, body, and language in medieval imaginative literature. Building on a long tradition of scholarship in areas of linguistics and psychology, the book seeks to explain how subjectivity is formed in medieval texts.

This book argues that far from preaching traditional, otherworldly ideals, the authors or these religious works were deeply engaged in the social, political, and spiritual issues that characterized the Holy Roman Empire at a time of radical transformation.

This work takes a fresh look at the problem of courtly love through that novel body of literature that emerged in the 12th century, obsessed with courtship, adultery and marriage. Nickolaus provides the reader with a concise critical discussion of the courtly love debate through broad historical and comparative analysis. At the level of plot there is a model that explains rhetoric, ideology and the proper place of amorous motifs in the context of prevailing Christian doctrines and attitudes.

This collection of facsimile reprints brings together essays in the field of American law relating to the controversial area of children's rights, parents' rights, and state's obligations toward children. Articles discuss the major rulings concerning an array of hotly debated issues. These include the definition of the parent, restrictions on gay and lesbian adoption, visitation rights, and the use of corporal punishment; a minor's right to contraception, abortion, medical care, and free speech; and the state's obligation to protect children, jail children, school children, and intervene on a...

This work offers an examination of religious texts written by 12 women over three centuries in two languages and three genres, showing the variety and complexity of gendered images available to medieval women. Moving beyond the categories of virgin, wife and widow, these religious texts created a spectrum of exemplary feminine life-paths based not on marital status, age, social rank or profession, but instead founded on biblical figures, monastic divisions of labour, expected saintly behaviours and even individual personality characteristics.

This study provides a re-evaluation of the role of pain and suffering in Hartmann von Aue. By critically combining traditional philology with modern theoretical analysis, drawing on theorists such as Mary Douglas, Michel Foucault, Norbert Elias and Elaine Scarry, Scott E. Pincikowski shows how the body is symbolically structured in Hartmann's work to create a distinctly medieval signification system of pain. This system is analysed through an examination of the physical body and social body of the court, and the harmonious and refined image of courtly society as depicted in Hartmann's work...

This work investigates the striking movement towards a discourse of bodily language used to discuss the relationship between the human person and god which takes place in the 12th century and after. It considers how this discourse reflects broader changes in the concept of the human and of God. Focusing on the mystical writings of Bernard of Clairvaux and Hadewijch of Brabant, the author shows how each exploits the language of taste and touch to articulate the possibility of the mystical experience itself, the immediacy of union with God. This is a comprehensive work on the relations between...

This volume considers medieval literary criticism of the Bible. It centres on the paradoxical interdependence of the literal and spiritual senses through examination of Nicholas of Lyra's literal commentary on the Gospel of John, and of the anonymous Middle English biblical adaptation, the Cursor Mundi.