Sacred Fictions of Medieval France

Sacred Fictions of Medieval France PDF Author: Maureen Barry McCann Boulton
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843844141
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
A study of the immensely popular "lives" of Christ and the Virgin in medieval France.

Sacred Fictions of Medieval France

Sacred Fictions of Medieval France PDF Author: Maureen Barry McCann Boulton
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843844141
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
A study of the immensely popular "lives" of Christ and the Virgin in medieval France.

Weaving Sacred Stories

Weaving Sacred Stories PDF Author: Laura Weigert
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801440083
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Spanning the backs of choir stalls above the heads of the canons and their officials, large-scale tapestries of saints' lives functioned as both architectural elements and pictorial narratives in the late Middle Ages. In an extensively illustrated book that features sixteen color plates, Laura Weigert examines the role of these tapestries in ritual performances. She situates individual tapestries within their architectural and ceremonial settings, arguing that the tapestries contributed to a process of storytelling in which the clerical elite of late medieval cities legitimated and defended their position in the social sphere.Weigert focuses on three of the most spectacular and little-studied tapestry series preserved from the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries: Lives of Saints Piat and Eleutherius (Notre-Dame, Tournai), Life of Saint Steven (Saint-Steven, Auxerre [now Musée du Moyen Age, Paris]), and Life of Saints Gervasius and Protasius (Saint-Julien, Le Mans). Each of these tapestries, measuring over forty meters in length, included elements that have traditionally been defined as either lay or clerical. On the prescribed days when the tapestries were displayed, the liturgical performance for which they were the setting sought to merge the history and patron saint of the local community with the universal history of the Christian church. Weigert combines a detailed analysis of the narrative structure of individual images with a discussion of the particular social circumstances in which they were produced and perceived. Weaving Sacred Stories is thereby significant not only to the history of medieval art but also to art history and cultural studies in general.

The Medieval French Ovide Moralisé

The Medieval French Ovide Moralisé PDF Author: K. Sarah-Jane Murray
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843846535
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1180

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Book Description
First English translation of one of the most influential French poems of the Middle Ages. The anonymous Ovide moralisé (Moralized Ovid), composed in France in the fourteenth century, retells and explicates Ovid's Metamorphoses, with generous helpings of related texts, for a Christian audience. Working from the premise that everything in the universe, including the pagan authors of Graeco-Roman Antiquity, is part of God's plan and expresses God's truth even without knowing it, the Ovide moralisé is a massive and influential work of synthesis and creativity, a remarkable window into a certain kind of medieval thinking. It is of major importance across time and across many disciplines, including literature, philosophy, theology, and art history. This three volume set offers an English translation of this hugely significant text - the first into any modern language. Based on the only complete edition to date, that by Cornelis de Boer and others completed in 1938, it also reflects more recent editions and numerous manuscripts. The translation is accompanied by a substantial introduction, situating the Ovide moralisé in terms of the reception of Ovid, the mythographical tradition, and its medieval French religious and intellectual milieu. Notes discuss textual problems and sources, and relate the text to key issues in the thought of theologians such as Bonaventure and Aquinas.

The Futures of Medieval French

The Futures of Medieval French PDF Author: Jane Gilbert
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843845954
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
Essays on aspects of medieval French literature, celebrating the scholarship of Sarah Kay and her influence on the field.

The Face and Faciality in Medieval French Literature, 1170-1390

The Face and Faciality in Medieval French Literature, 1170-1390 PDF Author: Alice Hazard
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843845873
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Modern theoretical approaches throw new light on the concepts of face and faciality in the Roman de la Rose and other French texts from the Middle Ages.

Marguerite de Navarre

Marguerite de Navarre PDF Author: Emily Butterworth
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843846268
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
A new exploration of the complexities and resolutions at play in the writings of Marguerite de Navarre, offering insights into how her work reflected the turbulence, uncertainties, and assurances of her historical period. Marguerite de Navarre was a Renaissance princess, diplomat, and mystical poet. She is arguably best known for The Heptameron, an answer to Boccaccio's Decameron, a brilliant and open-ended collection of short stories told by a group of men and women stranded in a monastery. The stories explore love, desire, male and female honour, individual salvation, and the iniquity of Franciscan monks, while the discussions between the storytellers enact and embody the tensions, ideologies, and prejudices underlying the stories. Marguerite herself was deeply involved in the debates and conflicts of her time. Her work reflects the turbulence, uncertainties, and assurances of her historical period, as the Renaissance re-imagined the past and the Reformation re-made the church, and represents her original and sometimes provocative position on these questions. This book presents The Heptameron and its investigations into gender relations, the nature of love, and the nature of religious faith in the context of the intellectual, religious, and political questions of the sixteenth century, setting it alongside Marguerite's other writings: her poetry, plays, and diplomatic letters. In chapters on communities, religion, politics, gender relationships, desire, and literary technique, it explores the complexities and resolutions of Marguerite's writing and her world. It aims to offer a guide to the critical tradition on Marguerite's work along with new readings of her texts, revealing both the historical specificity of her writing and its continuing relevance.

The Logic of Idolatry in Seventeenth-century French Literature

The Logic of Idolatry in Seventeenth-century French Literature PDF Author: Ellen McClure
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843845504
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Idolatry was one of the dominant and most contentious themes of early modern religious polemics. This book argues that many of the best-known literary and philosophical works of the French seventeenth century were deeply engaged and concerned with the theme. In a series of case studies and close readings, it shows that authors used the logic of idolatry to interrogate the fractured and fragile relationship between the divine and the human, with particular attention to the increasingly fraught question of the legitimacy of human agency. Reading d'Urf , Descartes, La Fontaine, S vign , Molire, and Racine through the lens of idolatry reveals heretofore hidden aspects of their work, all while demonstrating the link between the emergent autonomy of literature and philosophy and the confessional conflicts that dominated the period. In so doing, Professor McClure illustrates how religion can become a source of interpretive complexity, and how this dynamism can and should be taken into account in early modern French studies and beyond. ELLEN MCCLURE is Associate Professor of History and French, University of Illinois at Chicago.

New Medieval Literatures 20

New Medieval Literatures 20 PDF Author: Kellie Robertson
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843845571
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Cutting-edge and fresh new outlooks on medieval literature, emphasising the vibrancy of the field.

Verginia, Lucretia, and the Medieval Livy

Verginia, Lucretia, and the Medieval Livy PDF Author: Noah D Guynn
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843847353
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 135

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Book Description
The tragic stories of Lucretia and Verginia, taken from the fourteenth-century French version of Livy's History of Rome, presented with facing page English translation. Livy was famous in the Middle Ages for what Dante called his "unerring" history of Rome. Within that history, two episodes were especially well-known, both promoting female virtue while also suggesting how sexual violence could trigger political change. Lucretia commits suicide after her rape, precipitating the fall of the monarchy. Verginia is murdered by her father, who prefers to see her die than be seized by the corrupt judge Appius; her death then inspires an uprising that overthrows the decemvirs, republican officials who abused the very laws they had codified. While these stories circulated widely in the medieval period, access to the Latin Livy was impeded by a scarcity of manuscripts. There is nonetheless evidence that some poets, notably Chaucer and Gower, knew Livy through the Tite-Live, a French translation by Pierre Bersuire that was completed around 1358, and borrowed from it for their own works. There are many manuscripts of the Tite-Live, though little of it is available to modern readers. This book helps fill that gap by supplying critical editions and English translations of Bersuire's Verginia and Lucretia episodes, along with those in the Roman de la Rose by Jean de Meun, one of the earliest vernacular writers to show interest in Livy. Each text features a substantial critical apparatus, which glosses difficult terms and concepts and elucidates historical events and social contexts, while an introduction provides other contextual information.

Troubadour Texts and Contexts

Troubadour Texts and Contexts PDF Author: Courtney Joseph Wells
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843847337
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
New interpretations of different aspects of troubadour texts and lyrics, from their main themes and motifs to their reception and influence. Nearly a millennium after their songs of love, politics, war, satire, and redemption began to fill the courts of Europe, the troubadours continue to fascinate modern audiences. However, many aspects of their work, such as the supposedly adulterous nature of fin'amor, the "Frenchness" of the troubadours, the biographical veracity of the vidas, and the inherent misogyny of the troubadour lyric, have long been taken for granted. This volume takes a fresh look at these ideas, questioning many of the formative assumptions of troubadour scholarship, and proposing alternative readings of many canonical texts. Essays offer a reconsideration of the reception of works by such important figures as Guilhem IX, Jaufre Rudel, Peire Vidal, Pistoleta, Guilhem Adhemar, Giraut de Borneil, Perdigon, Fulk of Marseilles, and Arnaut Daniel. There are also examinations of the lexicon and cultural uses of chess, azure and tin, and the changing landscape of the Rhone delta, providing a deeper understanding of the imagery they furnished. Other essays consider the later life of the manuscripts, including the surprising story of how Napoleon demanded certain Occitan manuscripts after his conquest of Italy. The collection as a whole is thus a fitting tribute to the pioneering work of Wendy Pfeffer, who has made such a contribution to the field of troubadour studies.