Author: Sarah Salih
Publisher: DS Brewer
ISBN: 9781843840725
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 204
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Book Description
The saints were the superheroes and the celebrities of medieval England, bridging the gap between heaven and earth, the living and the dead. A vast body of literature evolved during the middle ages to ensure that everyone, from kings to peasants, knew the stories of the lives, deaths and afterlives of the saints. However, despite its popularity and ubiquity, the genre of the Saint's Life has until recently been little studied. This collection introduces the canon of Middle English hagiography; places it in the context of the cults of saints; analyses key themes within hagiographic narrative, including gender, power, violence and history; and, finally, shows how hagiographic themes survived the Reformation. Overall it offers both information for those coming to the genre for the first time, and points forward to new trends in research. Dr SARAH SALIH is a Lecturer in English at the University of East Anglia. Contributors: SAMANTHA RICHES, MARY BETH LONG, CLAIRE M. WATERS, ROBERT MILLS, ANKE BERNAU, KATHERINE J. LEWIS, MATTHEW WOODCOCK
Author: Laura Lambdin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313011117
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 447
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Book Description
Old and Middle English literature can be obscure and challenging. So, too, can the vast body of criticism it has elicited. Yet the masters of medieval literature often drew on similar texts, since imitation was admired. For this reason, recent scholarship has often focused on the importance of genre. The genre in which a work was written can illuminate the author's intentions and the text's meaning. Read in light of a genre's parameters, a given work can be considered in relation to other works within the same category. This reference is a comprehensive overview of Old and Middle English literature. Chapters focus on particular genres, such as Allegorical Verse, Balladry, Beast Fable, Chronicle, Debate Poetry, Epic and Heroic, Lyric, Middle English Parody/Burlesque, Religious and Allegorical Verse, and Romance. Expert contributors define the primary characteristics of each genre and discuss relevant literary works. Chapters provide extensive reviews of scholarship and close with detailed bibliographies. A more thorough bibliography of major scholarly studies closes the book.
Author: Larry Scanlon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521841674
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 315
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Book Description
A wide-ranging survey of the most important medieval authors and genres, designed for students of English.
Author: T. Pugh
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230610528
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225
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Book Description
This book exposes the ways in which ostensibly normative sexualities depend upon queerness to shore up their claims of privilege. Through readings of such classic texts as The Canterbury Tales and Eger and Grime , Tison Pugh explains how sexual normativity can often be claimed only after queerness has been rejected.
Author: Anna Baldwin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1137595825
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 293
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Book Description
This is a comprehensive guide to a literary period characterized by great variety and imagination, and vividly alert to the social transformations overtaking society. Spanning almost two centuries, it introduces the reader to a diverse range of authors writing for a fast-developing readership of both men and women. Each chapter focuses on a group of genres primarily associated with a particular social class – from the Drama and Saints' Lives accessible to the illiterate, to the sophisticated Romances of Love savoured by the aristocracy and the Court. Lively historical narratives place each group of texts in their social, political and cultural contexts. Significant or typical texts are given more detailed analysis that includes critical issues and questions to guide the reader's own approach, and each section is supported by a detailed bibliography of further reading.
Author: Thomas Head
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317325141
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 892
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Book Description
This collection presents-through the medium of translated sources-a comprehensive guide to the development of hagiography and the cult of the saints in western Christendom during the middle ages. It provides an unparalleled resource for the study of the ideals of sanctity and the practice of religion in the medieval west. Intended for the classroom, for the medieval scholar who wishes to explore sources in unfamiliar languages, and for the general reader fascinated by the saints, this collection provides the reader a chance to explore in depth a full range of writings about the saints (the term hagiography is derived from Greek roots: hagios=holy and graphe=writing). The thirty-six chapters contain sources either in their entirety or in selections of substantial length. The great majority of the texts have never previously appeared in English translation. Those which have appeared in earlier translation, are here presented in versions based on significant new textual and historical scholarship which makes them significant improvements on the earlier versions. All the translations are accompanied by introductions, notes, and suggestions for further reading in order to help guide the reader. The first selections date to the fourth century, when the ideals of Christian sanctity were evolving to meet the demands of a world in which Christianity was an accepted religion and when the public veneration of relics was growing greatly in scope. The last selections date to the period immediately prior to the Reformation, a period in which the traditional concept of sanctity and acceptability of de cult of relics was being questioned. In addition to numerous works from the clerical languages of Latin and Greek, the selections include translations from Romance, Celtic, Germanic, and Slavic vernacular languages, s well as Hebrew texts concerning the martyrdom of Jews at the hands of Christians. Originating in lands from Iceland to Hungary and from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, they are taken from a full range of the many genres which constituted hagiography: lives of the saints, collections of miracle stories, accounts of the discovery or movement of relics, liturgical books, visions, canonization inquests, and even heresy trials.
Author: Rahel Orgis
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319921266
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 339
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Book Description
This book explores how literary texts envision England and respond to discourses and conceptions of Englishness and the English nation, especially in relation to gender and language. The essays discuss texts from the fifteenth to the twentieth century and bear witness to changing views of England and the English, highlighting the importance of religion, economy, landscape, the spectre of the “other” and language in this discourse. The volume pays attention to women writers’ reflection on the nation and the roles female figures play in male writers’ visions of nationhood. It brings into conversation less well-known voices like those of Osbern Bokenham, Thomas Deloney, Eleanor Davies and Jacquetta Hawkes with canonical authors—William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf—and opens a space for exploring the interplay of dominant and variant voices in the fashioning of England.
Author: Patrick J. Hayes
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 673
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Book Description
Miracles give hope to the hopeless and exemplify the intersection of the divine and the mundane. They have shaped world history and continue to influence us through their presence in films, television, novels, and popular culture. This encyclopedia provides a unique resource on the philosophical, historical, religious, and cross-cultural conceptions of miracles that cut across denominational lines. Multidisciplinary in approach, this informative yet entertaining encyclopedia covers major aspects of miraculous phenomena through more than 150 alphabetically arranged entries that document how humanity's belief in religious miracles over multiple places, periods, and faiths have affected society—even changed the course of history. Written for high school students and general readers, the coverage enables readers to learn about different civilizations and cultures, the controversies surrounding different beliefs, and the often uncomfortable engagement of religion with science. This single-volume book provides a one-stop ready-reference that addresses a broad variety of subject matter on miraculous phenomena and guides further investigations into the subject. Helpful illustrations and lucid explanations of the ancillary concepts associated with miraculous phenomena make learning about this topic more engaging. Readers will be able to link the doctrinal concepts, such as "grace" or "prayer," with the descriptions of miraculous events, especially those associated with saints or holy objects. The examination of the controversial aspects of different belief systems along with the book's balanced coverage of the interpretation of miracles will encourage students to weigh different explanations, thus fostering the development of their critical thinking skills.
Author: Kathleen Ashley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000396789
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
Bringing together artifacts, texts, and practices within an interpretive framework that stresses the cultural work performed by saints, Kathleen Ashley presents a comparative study of the cults of the medieval Sainte Foy at a number of the sites where she was especially venerated. This book analyzes how each cult site produced the saint it needed, appropriating or creating whatever was required to that end. Ashley’s approach is thoroughly interdisciplinary, incorporating visual, religious, medieval, and women’s and gender studies as well as literary studies and social history. She uses the theoretical framework of "cultural work" to analyze how the cult of Sainte Foy was sponsored and received by specific groups in different locales in Europe. The book is comprehensive in terms of historical as well as geographical range, tracing the history of the cult from the early Middle Ages into the present day. It also includes historiographical analysis, examining the way the cults of Sainte Foy have been represented in various historical accounts. Ashley’s narrative challenges the boundary between "elite" and "popular" culture and complicates the traditional vernacular vs. Latin language binary. A chief aim of the study is to show how "art" objects always operated in conjunction with other cultural texts to construct a saint’s cult. The volume is heavily illustrated, showing artifacts such as stained-glass windows and wall paintings which are not readily available from any other source. This book will be of special interest to scholars in art history, medieval history, gender studies, and religion.
Author: Anke Bernau
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 0719098165
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 344
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Book Description
This collection explores some of the many ways in which sanctity was closely intertwined with the development of literary strategies across a range of writings in late medieval Britain. Rather than looking for clues in religious practices in order to explain such changes, or reading literature for information about sanctity, these essays consider the ways in which sanctity - as concept and as theme - allowed writers to articulate and to develop further their 'craft' in specific ways. While scholars in recent years have turned once more to questions of literary form and technique, the kinds of writings considered in this collection - writings that were immensely popular in their own time - have not attracted the same amount of attention as more secular forms. The collection as a whole offers new insights for scholars interested in form, style, poetics, literary history and aesthetics, by considering sanctity first and foremost as literature
