Guillaume de Palerne

Guillaume de Palerne PDF Author:
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786419647
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
This popular and important romance in the Middle Ages was written in Picard, one of the more difficult regional dialects of Old French. Guillaume de Palerne is a non-Arthurian romance offering a different vision of the medieval world, one in which we find the hero in a more realistic setting confronting the obstacles that fate--not his quest for fame--has set in his path. It is the story of a young prince of Sicily who is kidnapped by a werewolf at the age of four. Woven into the story of the eponymous hero is the parallel story of Alphonse, the Spanish prince who was transformed into a werewolf by his stepmother when he was still a toddler. The anonymous poet has woven humor, contemporary allusions, reworkings of traditional motifs and a hidden moral lesson into the story's engaging plot. The romance also presents the reader and scholar with a complex portrayal of the constancy and changeability of identity that provides new insight into the medieval attitude toward individuality. Based primarily on Alexandre Micha's 1990 edition, this translation is intended as a guide to reading the original rather than as a substitute. The editor has attempted to be as literal as possible and to remain faithful to the register and tone of the original, including its original word order and grammatical structure. In addition to the translation, the finished text includes an introduction, notes and a select bibliography.

Guillaume de Palerne

Guillaume de Palerne PDF Author:
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786419647
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
This popular and important romance in the Middle Ages was written in Picard, one of the more difficult regional dialects of Old French. Guillaume de Palerne is a non-Arthurian romance offering a different vision of the medieval world, one in which we find the hero in a more realistic setting confronting the obstacles that fate--not his quest for fame--has set in his path. It is the story of a young prince of Sicily who is kidnapped by a werewolf at the age of four. Woven into the story of the eponymous hero is the parallel story of Alphonse, the Spanish prince who was transformed into a werewolf by his stepmother when he was still a toddler. The anonymous poet has woven humor, contemporary allusions, reworkings of traditional motifs and a hidden moral lesson into the story's engaging plot. The romance also presents the reader and scholar with a complex portrayal of the constancy and changeability of identity that provides new insight into the medieval attitude toward individuality. Based primarily on Alexandre Micha's 1990 edition, this translation is intended as a guide to reading the original rather than as a substitute. The editor has attempted to be as literal as possible and to remain faithful to the register and tone of the original, including its original word order and grammatical structure. In addition to the translation, the finished text includes an introduction, notes and a select bibliography.

Metamorphoses of the Werewolf

Metamorphoses of the Werewolf PDF Author: Leslie A. Sconduto
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786452161
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
The mythical werewolf is known for its sudden transformation under the full moon, but the creature also underwent a narrative evolution through the centuries, from bloodthirsty creature to hero. Beginning with The Epic of Gilgamesh, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and an account in Petronius' Satyricon, the book analyzes the context that created the traditional image of the werewolf as a savage beast. The Catholic Church's response to the popular belief in werewolves and medieval literature's sympathetic depiction of the werewolf as victim are presented to support the idea of the werewolf as a complex and varied cultural symbol. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Guillaume de Palerne

Guillaume de Palerne PDF Author: H. Michelant
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780384204003
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Rural Space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age

Rural Space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age PDF Author: Albrecht Classen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110285428
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 932

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Book Description
Older research on the premodern world limited its focus on the Church, the court, and, more recently, on urban space. The present volume invites readers to consider the meaning of rural space, both in light of ecocritical readings and social-historical approaches. While previous scholars examined the figure of the peasant in the premodern world, the current volume combines a large number of specialized studies that investigate how the natural environment and the appearance of members of the rural population interacted with the world of the court and of the city. The experience in rural space was important already for writers and artists in the premodern era, as the large variety of scholarly approaches indicates. The present volume signals how much the surprisingly close interaction between members of the aristocratic and of the peasant class determined many literary and art-historical works. In a surprisingly large number of cases we can even discover elements of utopia hidden in rural space. We also observe how much the rural world was a significant element already in early-medieval mentality. Moreover, as many authors point out, the impact of natural forces on premodern society was tremendous, if not catastrophic.

MLN.

MLN. PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philology, Modern
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description


Transforming Tales

Transforming Tales PDF Author: Miranda Griffin
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191510602
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
Transforming Tales argues that the study of transformation is crucial for understanding a wide range of canonical work in medieval French literature. From the lais and Arthurian romances of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, through the Roman de la Rose and its widespread influence, to the fourteenth-century Ovide moralisé and the vast prose cycles of the late Middle Ages, metamorphosis is a recurrent theme, resulting in some of the best-known and most powerful literature of the era. Transforming Tales is the first book in English to explore in detail the importance of ideas of metamorphosis in French literature from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. This book's purpose is twofold: it traces a series of figures (the werewolf, the snake-woman, the nymph, the magician, amongst others) as they are transformed within individual texts; and it also examines the way in which the stories of transformation themselves become rewritten during the course of the Middle Ages. Griffin's approach combines close readings and comparisons of literary texts with readings informed by modern critical theories which are grounded in many of the ideas raised by medieval metamorphosis: the body, gender, identity and categories of life. Literary depictions and reworkings of transformation raise questions about medieval understandings of the differences between human and animal, man and woman, God and man, life and death—these are the questions explored in Transforming Tales.

Modern Language Notes

Modern Language Notes PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philology, Modern
Languages : en
Pages : 1112

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Book Description


Guillaume de Palerne

Guillaume de Palerne PDF Author: H. Michelant
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780384204102
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


The Myth of Piers Plowman

The Myth of Piers Plowman PDF Author: Lawrence Warner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107043638
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
A revisionary account of the powerful myths that grew up around the production and reception of the great medieval poem. Also available as Open Access.

In the Skin of a Beast

In the Skin of a Beast PDF Author: Peggy McCracken
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022645908X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
In medieval literature, when humans and animals meet—whether as friends or foes—issues of mastery and submission are often at stake. In the Skin of a Beast shows how the concept of sovereignty comes to the fore in such narratives, reflecting larger concerns about relations of authority and dominion at play in both human-animal and human-human interactions. Peggy McCracken discusses a range of literary texts and images from medieval France, including romances in which animal skins appear in symbolic displays of power, fictional explorations of the wolf’s desire for human domestication, and tales of women and snakes converging in a representation of territorial claims and noble status. These works reveal that the qualities traditionally used to define sovereignty—lineage and gender among them—are in fact mobile and contingent. In medieval literary texts, as McCracken demonstrates, human dominion over animals is a disputed model for sovereign relations among people: it justifies exploitation even as it mandates protection and care, and it depends on reiterations of human-animal difference that paradoxically expose the tenuous nature of human exceptionalism.