For well over a thousand years, scholars exploited the potential of architecture for allegorical representation. Regardless of whether they were describing the characteristics of romantic love, the framework of the medieval education syllabus, the community of the church, the virginal body or the contemplative vocation, writers turned repeatedly to the trope of the textual building. What was it about architecture that enabled it to fulfil such diverse functions over such a long timespan?
"Castles of the Mind" identifies and traces two primary traditions of symbolic textual architecture...
For well over a thousand years, scholars exploited the potential of architecture for allegorical representation. Regardless of whether they were de...
Studies of gender in medieval culture have tended to focus on femininity; however, the study of medieval masculinities has developed into an important area of enquiry in the last few years. This collection is the first to concentrate on the ways in which varieties of medieval masculinity intersected with concepts of holiness. Individual essays in this volume explore differing notions of holiness which had currency in the Middle Ages, understood variously as religious, saintly, sacred, pure and morally perfect. They also consider the ways in which the performance of both holiness and...
Studies of gender in medieval culture have tended to focus on femininity; however, the study of medieval masculinities has developed into an import...
An examination of images of the Virgin Mary in mediaeval theological, philosophical and literary texts. It demonstrates how the figure of Mary influences the depiction of female characters in sacred writing, particularly Saint Margaret of Antioch, the Pearl maiden, the Wife of Bath and Constance.
An examination of images of the Virgin Mary in mediaeval theological, philosophical and literary texts. It demonstrates how the figure of Mary influen...
Consistently idealized in the Middle Ages, virginity features in a multitude of medieval discourses. Yet, the question What is a virgin? is unexpectedly complex. This collection explores some of the specific manifestations of virginity in late medieval culture. It looks at how a selection of medical, legal, hagiographical and historical texts treat virginity, and how the concept of virginity itself affects those texts. Amongst the topics covered are the medieval physician and the history of the hymen, mysticism and the erotic, masculinity and knighthood, chastity tests in Welsh literature,...
Consistently idealized in the Middle Ages, virginity features in a multitude of medieval discourses. Yet, the question What is a virgin? is unexpected...
This volume provides a detailed overview of the Towneley cycle of plays, which were written c. 1500. The plays begin with the fall of Lucifer and end with the Last Judgement. Peter Happe examines the cycle's textual and manuscript history and discusses issues of language and style, the structure of the cycle, and its possible sources and analogues. He also addresses the historical and religious context of the cycle and its performance history."
This volume provides a detailed overview of the Towneley cycle of plays, which were written c. 1500. The plays begin with the fall of Lucifer and end ...
First published in 2001, "Double Agents "was the first book-length study of women in Anglo-Saxon written culture that took on the insights provided by contemporary critical and feminist theory, and it quickly established itself as a standard. Now available again, it complicates the exclusion of women from the historical record of Anglo-Saxon England by tackling the deeper questions behind how the feminine is modeled, used, and made metaphoric in Anglo-Saxon texts, even when the women themselves are absent.
First published in 2001, "Double Agents "was the first book-length study of women in Anglo-Saxon written culture that took on the insights provided...
The Wooing Group is a collection of texts in English written by an unknown author in the late twelfth to early thirteenth centuries, almost certainly aimed at a group of women living as anchoresses and recluses who were literate in English and interested in guidance on both spiritual and worldly issues. This volume brings together our most current interpretations of these texts from scholars currently working in the fields of medieval spirituality, gender, and the anchorite tradition, providing new literary, theological, linguistic, and cultural context for the works and situating them...
The Wooing Group is a collection of texts in English written by an unknown author in the late twelfth to early thirteenth centuries, almost certain...