Despite the fashionable standing of irony in studies of modern literature and its occasional application to medieval studies in a number of recent works, no sustained analysis of this phenomenon has yet been attempted for medieval literature. Professor Green attempts to fill the most important part of this lacuna by discussing irony in the medieval genre in which it is employed most frequently and with the greatest sophistication, the romance. The approach is therefore directed more towards the genre as such than to any specific example, and, although the book is written primarily from a...
Despite the fashionable standing of irony in studies of modern literature and its occasional application to medieval studies in a number of recent wor...
Although much work has recently been done on the relationship between poet, narrator and audience in medieval literature, no sustained attempt has yet been made to inquire into the ways in which the listener's responses are rhetorically controlled and guided in the case of the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach. This book attempts such an inquiry by combining five approaches which have so far been used only separately or partially: the narrator's use of a point of view technique, a specific problem concerning the medieval technique, a specific problem concerning the medieval reception of his...
Although much work has recently been done on the relationship between poet, narrator and audience in medieval literature, no sustained attempt has yet...
This book deals with the first 500 years of German literature (800-1300) and how it was received by contemporaries. Covering the whole spectrum of genres, from dance-songs to liturgy, heroic epics to drama, it explores which works were meant to be recited to listeners, which were destined for the individual reader, and which anticipated a twofold reception. It emphasizes this third possibility, seeing it as an example of the bicultural world of the Middle Ages, combining orality with writing, illiteracy with literacy, vernacular with Latin, lay with clerical.
This book deals with the first 500 years of German literature (800-1300) and how it was received by contemporaries. Covering the whole spectrum of gen...
This book offers a distinctive and accessible approach to the earliest encounters of the barbarian societies of Northern Europe with classical antiquity and with early Christianity. It brings together linguistic evidence from across Europe and dating from before Caesar to about 900 AD, to shed light on important aspects of Germanic culture. It shows how historical phonology and semantics, often avoided by nonspecialists, can provide important clues for historians and archaeologists of the period. Likewise, it demonstrates that philologists and linguists ignore historical evidence at their...
This book offers a distinctive and accessible approach to the earliest encounters of the barbarian societies of Northern Europe with classical antiqui...
This book offers a distinctive and accessible approach to the earliest encounters of the barbarian societies of Northern Europe with classical antiquity and with early Christianity. It brings together linguistic evidence from across Europe and dating from before Caesar to about 900 AD, to shed light on important aspects of Germanic culture. It shows how historical phonology and semantics, often avoided by nonspecialists, can provide important clues for historians and archaeologists of the period. Likewise, it demonstrates that philologists and linguists ignore historical evidence at their...
This book offers a distinctive and accessible approach to the earliest encounters of the barbarian societies of Northern Europe with classical antiqui...
Up to the twelfth century, writing in the western vernaculars dealt almost exclusively with religious, historical and factual themes, all of which were understood to convey the truth. The second half of the twelfth century saw the emergence of a new genre--the romance--which was consciously conceived as fictional and therefore allowed to break free from traditional presuppositions. Green examines this period of crucial importance for the romance genre and for the genesis of medieval fiction.
Up to the twelfth century, writing in the western vernaculars dealt almost exclusively with religious, historical and factual themes, all of which wer...
In contrast to the widespread view that the Middle Ages were a static, unchanging period in which attitudes to women were uniformly negative, D. H. Green argues that around 1200 the conventional relationship between men and women was subject to significant challenge through discussions in the vernacular literature of the period. Hitherto scholarly interest in gender relations in such literature has largely focused on French romance or on literature in English from a later period. By turning the focus on the rich material to be garnered from Germany - the romances Erec, Tristan and Parzival -...
In contrast to the widespread view that the Middle Ages were a static, unchanging period in which attitudes to women were uniformly negative, D. H. Gr...
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...
