Studies in Medieval History and Culture
About the Book Series
For information about contributing to the series please contact Michael Greenwood ([email protected])
Pestilence in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature
1st Edition
By Byron Lee Grigsby
June 09, 2014
Pestilence in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature examines three diseases--leprosy, bubonic plague, and syphilis--to show how doctors, priests, and literary authors from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance interpreted certain illnesses through a moral filter. Lacking knowledge about ...
Speculative Grammar and Stoic Language Theory in Medieval Allegorical Narrative: From Prudentius to Alan of Lille
1st Edition
By Jeffrey Bardzell
June 09, 2014
In his Plaint of Nature (De planctu Naturae), Alan of Lille bases much of his argument against sin in general and homosexuality in particular on the claim that both amount to bad grammar. The book explores the philosophical uses of grammar that were so formative of Alan’s thinking in major writers ...
Christian, Saracen and Genre in Medieval French Literature: Imagination and Cultural Interaction in the French Middle Ages
1st Edition
By Lynn Tarte Ramey
January 30, 2014
This book explores the historical and imaginary representation of the Saracen, or Muslim, in French writings from 1100 to 1500....
The Contested Theological Authority of Thomas Aquinas: The Controversies Between Hervaeus Natalis and Durandus of St. Pourcain, 1307-1323
1st Edition
By Elizabeth Lowe
January 30, 2014
This book explains how the authority Thomas Aquinas's theological teachings grew out of the doctrinal controversies surrounding it within the Dominican Order. The adoption and eventual promotion of the teachings of Aquinas by the Order of Preachers ran counter to every other current running through...
Between Courtly Literature and Al-Andaluz: Oriental Symbolism and Influences in the Romances of Chretien de Troyes
1st Edition
By Michelle Reichert
January 14, 2014
Christen de Troyes uses repeated references to Spain throughout his romances; despite past suggestions that they contain Mozarabic and Islamic themes and motifs, these references have never been commented upon. The book will demonstrate that these allusions to Spain occur at key moments in the ...
Bodies of Pain: Suffering in the Works of Hartmann von Aue
1st Edition
By Scott E. Pincikowski
January 14, 2014
This study provides a much needed re-evaluation of the role of pain and suffering in Hartmann von Aue. By critically and carefully combining traditional philology with modern theoretical analysis, drawing on theorists such as Mary Douglas, Michele Foucault, Norbert Elias and Elaine Scarry, the ...
Aspects of Love in John Gower's Confessio Amantis
1st Edition
By Ellen S. Bakalian
December 11, 2013
Throughout the tales in the Confessio Amantis, John Gower proposes that reciprocal love is the remedy to what ails man and society. This book explores how Gower uses the aspects of love in the Confessio-the notions of kinde, or passionate love, and reason in the sphere of love; honeste love in the ...
Worlds Made Flesh: Chronicle Histories and Medieval Manuscript Culture
1st Edition
By Lauryn Mayer
December 11, 2013
This book focuses on the use of the past in two senses. First, it looks at the way in which medieval texts from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries discussed the past: how they presented history, what kinds of historical narratives they employed, and what anxieties gathered around the practice of...
Literary Hybrids: Indeterminacy in Medieval & Modern French Narrative
1st Edition
By Erika E. Hess
September 03, 2013
Much like the fantastic marginalia of medieval illuminated manuscripts, medieval and modern hybrid characters-including werewolves, serpent women, and wild men-function as a frame, critiquing the discourses that run through their texts. In Literary Hybrids, Erika Hess provides a close reading of ...
Race and Ethnicity in Anglo-Saxon Literature
1st Edition
By Stephen Harris
September 03, 2013
What makes English literature English ? This question inspires Stephen Harris's wide-ranging study of Old English literature. From Bede in the eighth century to Geoffrey of Monmouth in the twelfth, Harris explores the intersections of race and literature before the rise of imagined communities. ...
Feminine Figurae: Representations of Gender in Religious Texts by Medieval German Women Writers, 1100-1475
1st Edition
By Rebecca L.R. Garber
August 21, 2013
This work offers an examination of religious texts written by twelve 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...
Kingship, Conquest, and Patria
1st Edition
By Kristen Lee Over
May 01, 2013
First Published in 2005. Distinctly interdisciplinary, Kingship, Conquest, and Patria brings together French and Welsh studies with literary and historical analysis, genre study with questions of medieval colonialisms and national writing. It treats eight centuries' worth of insular and ...