Pestilence in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature

Pestilence in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature PDF Author: Bryon Lee Grigsby
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415968225
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Get Book Here

Book Description
First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Pestilence in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature

Pestilence in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature PDF Author: Bryon Lee Grigsby
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415968225
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Get Book Here

Book Description
First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Poison on the early modern English stage

Poison on the early modern English stage PDF Author: Lisa Hopkins
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526159910
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Get Book Here

Book Description
Many early modern plays use poison, most famously Hamlet, where the murder of Old Hamlet showcases the range of issues poison mobilises. Its orchard setting is one of a number of sinister uses of plants which comment on both the loss of horticultural knowledge resulting from the Dissolution of the Monasteries and also the many new arrivals in English gardens through travel, trade, and attempts at colonisation. The fact that Old Hamlet was asleep reflects unease about soporifics troubling the distinction between sleep and death; pouring poison into the ear smuggles in the contemporary fear of informers; and it is difficult to prove. This book explores poisoning in early modern plays, the legal and epistemological issues it raises, and the cultural work it performs, which includes questions related to race, religion, nationality, gender, and humans’ relationship to the environment.

Plague Writing in Early Modern England

Plague Writing in Early Modern England PDF Author: Ernest B. Gilman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226294110
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

Get Book Here

Book Description
During the seventeenth century, England was beset by three epidemics of the bubonic plague, each outbreak claiming between a quarter and a third of the population of London and other urban centers. Surveying a wide range of responses to these epidemics—sermons, medical tracts, pious exhortations, satirical pamphlets, and political commentary—Plague Writing in Early Modern England brings to life the many and complex ways Londoners made sense of such unspeakable devastation. Ernest B. Gilman argues that the plague writing of the period attempted unsuccessfully to rationalize the catastrophic and that its failure to account for the plague as an instrument of divine justice fundamentally threatened the core of Christian belief. Gilman also trains his critical eye on the works of Jonson, Donne, Pepys, and Defoe, which, he posits, can be more fully understood when put into the context of this century-long project to “write out” the plague. Ultimately, Plague Writing in Early Modern England is more than a compendium of artifacts of a bygone era; it holds up a distant mirror to reflect our own condition in the age of AIDS, super viruses, multidrug resistant tuberculosis, and the hovering threat of a global flu pandemic.

Death in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times

Death in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times PDF Author: Albrecht Classen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110434873
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 505

Get Book Here

Book Description
Death is not only the final moment of life, it also casts a huge shadow on human society at large. People throughout time have had to cope with death as an existential experience, and this also, of course, in the premodern world. The contributors to the present volume examine the material and spiritual conditions of the culture of death, studying specific buildings and spaces, literary works and art objects, theatrical performances, and medical tracts from the early Middle Ages to the late eighteenth century. Death has always evoked fear, terror, and awe, it has puzzled and troubled people, forcing theologians and philosophers to respond and provide answers for questions that seem to evade real explanations. The more we learn about the culture of death, the more we can comprehend the culture of life. As this volume demonstrates, the approaches to death varied widely, also in the Middle Ages and the early modern age. This volume hence adds a significant number of new facets to the critical examination of this ever-present phenomenon of death, exploring poetic responses to the Black Death, types of execution of a female murderess, death as the springboard for major political changes, and death reflected in morality plays and art.

The Epistemology of the Monstrous in the Middle Ages

The Epistemology of the Monstrous in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Lisa Verner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135873062
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 186

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book studies the phenomena of monsters and marvels from the time of Pliny the Elder through the 14th century.

Narrating Medicine in Middle English Poetry

Narrating Medicine in Middle English Poetry PDF Author: Eve Salisbury
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350249815
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Get Book Here

Book Description
Exploring medical writing in England in the 100+ years after the advent of the “Great Mortality”, this book examines the storytelling practices of poets, patients, and physicians in the midst of a medieval public health crisis and demonstrates how literary narratives enable us to see a kinship between poetry and the healing arts. Looking at how we can learn to diagnose a text as if we were diagnosing a body, Salisbury provides new insights into how we can recuperate the voices of those afflicted by illness in medieval texts when we have no direct testimony. She considers how we interpret stories told by patients in narratives mediated by others, ways that women factor into the shaping of a medical canon, how medical writing intersects with religious belief and memorial practices governed by the Church, and ways that regimens of health benefit a population in the throes of an epidemic.

Medicine and the Seven Deadly Sins in Late Medieval Literature and Culture

Medicine and the Seven Deadly Sins in Late Medieval Literature and Culture PDF Author: Virginia Langum
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 113744990X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 237

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book considers how scientists, theologians, priests, and poets approached the relationship of the human body and ethics in the later Middle Ages. Is medicine merely a metaphor for sin? Or can certain kinds of bodies physiologically dispose people to be angry, sad, or greedy? If so, then is it their fault? Virginia Langum offers an account of the medical imagery used to describe feelings and actions in religious and literary contexts, referencing a variety of behavioral discussions within medical contexts. The study draws upon medical and theological writing for its philosophical basis, and upon more popular works of religion, as well as poetry, to show how these themes were articulated, explored, and questioned more widely in medieval culture.

The Encyclopedia of English Renaissance Literature, 3 Volume Set

The Encyclopedia of English Renaissance Literature, 3 Volume Set PDF Author: Garrett A. Sullivan, Jr.
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405194499
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1335

Get Book Here

Book Description
Featuring entries composed by leading international scholars, The Encyclopedia of English Renaissance Literature presents comprehensive coverage of all aspects of English literature produced from the early 16th to the mid 17th centuries. Comprises over 400 entries ranging from 1000 to 5000 words written by leading international scholars Arranged in A-Z format across three fully indexed and cross-referenced volumes Provides coverage of canonical authors and their works, as well as a variety of previously under-considered areas, including women writers, broadside ballads, commonplace books, and other popular literary forms Biographical material on authors is presented in the context of cutting-edge critical discussion of literary works. Represents the most comprehensive resource available for those working in English Renaissance literary studies Also available online as part of the Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Literature, providing 24/7 access and powerful searching, browsing and cross-referencing capabilities

Middle English Medical Recipes and Literary Play, 1375-1500

Middle English Medical Recipes and Literary Play, 1375-1500 PDF Author: Hannah Bower
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192666126
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Middle English Medical Recipes and Literary Play, 1375-1500 is the first detailed, book-length study of Middle English medical recipes in their literary, imaginative, social, and codicological contexts. Analysing recipe collections in over seventy late medieval manuscripts, this book explores how the words and structures of recipes could contribute to those texts' healing purpose, but could also confuse, impede, exceed, and redefine that purpose. The study therefore presents a challenge to recipes' traditional reputation as mundane, unartful texts written and read solely for the sake of directing practical action. Crucially, it also relocates these neglected texts and overlooked manuscripts within the complex networks forming medieval textual culture, demonstrating that—though marginalized in modern scholarship—medical recipes were actually linguistically, formally, materially, and imaginatively interconnected with many other late medieval discourses, including devotional writings, romances, fabliaux, and Chaucerian poetry. The monograph thus models for readers modes of analysis and close reading that might be deployed in relation to recipes in order to understand better their allusive, fragmentary, and playful qualities as well as their wide-ranging influence on medieval imaginations.

Maps and Monsters in Medieval England

Maps and Monsters in Medieval England PDF Author: Asa Simon Mittman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135501041
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Get Book Here

Book Description
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 margins were considered monstrous. Medieval geography, for centuries scorned as crude, is now the subject of several careful studies. Monsters have likewise been the subject of recent attention in the growing field of monster studies, though few works situate these creatures firmly in their specific historical contexts. This book sits at the crossroads of these two discourses (geography and monstrosity), treated separately in the established scholarship but inseparable in the minds of medieval authors and artists.