Studies in Medieval History and Culture
About the Book Series
For information about contributing to the series please contact Michael Greenwood ([email protected])
Crafting the Witch: Gendering Magic in Medieval and Early Modern England
1st Edition
By Heidi Breuer
September 14, 2011
This book analyzes the gendered transformation of magical figures occurring in Arthurian romance in England from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. In the earlier texts, magic is predominantly a masculine pursuit, garnering its user prestige and power, but in the later texts, magic ...
Through the Daemon's Gate: Kepler's Somnium, Medieval Dream Narratives, and the Polysemy of Allegorical Motifs
1st Edition
By Dean Swinford
October 28, 2010
This book tells the story of the early modern astronomer Johannes Kepler’s Somnium, which has been regarded by science historians and literary critics alike as the first true example of science fiction. Kepler began writing his complex and heavily-footnoted tale of a fictional Icelandic astronomer ...
Rooted in the Earth, Rooted in the Sky: Hildegard of Bingen and Premodern Medicine
1st Edition
By Victoria Sweet
June 18, 2010
Rooted in the Earth, Rooted in the Sky is a detailed study of the medicine of Hildegard of Bingen, a medieval mystic, theologian and composer, who also wrote a practical medical text. Although there has been an explosion of interest in Hildegard's music, theology, illuminations and medicine in the ...
Illuminating the Border of French and Flemish Manuscripts, 1270–1310
1st Edition
By Lisa Moore Hunt
June 04, 2010
This study first examines the marginal repertoire in two well-known manuscripts, the Psalter of Guy de Dampierre and an Arthurian Romance, within their material and codicological contexts. This repertoire then provides a template for an extended study of the marginal motifs that appear in eighteen ...
Body and Sacred Place in Medieval Europe, 1100-1389
1st Edition
By Dawn Marie Hayes
August 21, 2009
Body and Sacred Place in Medieval Europe investigates the medieval understanding of sacred place, arguing for the centrality of bodies and bodily metaphors to the establishment, function, use, and power of medieval churches. Questioning the traditional division of sacred and profane jurisdictions, ...
Fair and Varied Forms: Visual Textuality in Medieval Illustrated Manuscripts
1st Edition
By Mary C. Olson
July 01, 2009
First published in 2003. Research in Medieval Studies continues to be fresh in these volumes in the Medieval History and Culture series which includes studies on individual works and authors or Latin and vernacular literatures, historical personailities and events, theological and philosophical ...
Saracens and the Making of English Identity: The Auchinleck Manuscript
1st Edition
By Siobhain Bly Calkin
June 16, 2009
This book explores the ways in which discourses of religious, racial, and national identity blur and engage each other in the medieval West. Specifically, the book studies depictions of Muslims in England during the 1330s and argues that these depictions, although historically inaccurate, served to...
The King's Two Maps: Cartography & Culture in Thirteenth-Century England
1st Edition
By Daniel Birkholz
June 16, 2009
While a culture may have a dominant way of mapping, its geography is always plural, and there is always competition among conceptions of space. Beginning with this understanding, this book traces the map's early development into an emblem of the state, and charts the social and cultural ...
Women of the Humiliati: A Moral Response to Medieval Civic Life
1st Edition
By Sally Brasher
June 16, 2009
This book examines the contribution of women to the Humiliati movement, providing original archival evidence indicating that women dominated the group's membership. These findings have implications for both women's spirituality and women's work, correcting the received opinion that the patriarchal ...
She, this in Blak: Vision, Truth, and Will in Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Ciseyde
1st Edition
By Thomas Hill
May 25, 2008
"She, This in Blak" takes a fresh look at Chaucer's great Trojan romance, Troilus and Criseyde, in light of recent scholarship on late scholastic discourses on representation and causality as they pertain to human perception and judgment. This study also contributes to a growing literature on the ...
Maps and Monsters in Medieval England
1st Edition
By Asa Simon Mittman
April 30, 2008
This study centers on issues of marginality and monstrosity in medieval England. In the middle ages, geography was viewed as divinely ordered, so Britain's location at the periphery of the inhabitable world caused anxiety among its inhabitants. Far from the world's holy center, the geographic ...
The Medieval Tradition of Thebes: History and Narrative in the Roman de Thebes, Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Lydgate
1st Edition
By Dominique Battles
May 06, 2004
As the story of the war between the sons of Oedipus and their cursed race, the Theban legend rivaled that of Troy in popularity and importance for medieval poets and audiences. Dominique Battles explores the vernacular Theban narratives of the Middle Ages, including the Old French Roman de Thebes ...