Perceval and Gawain in Dark Mirrors

Perceval and Gawain in Dark Mirrors PDF Author: Rupert T. Pickens
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476618593
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
An innovative author of verse romance, Chretien de Troyes wrote in northern France between 1170 and 1190. Credited with the first Arthurian romance, he composed five works set in King Arthur's court, culminating with an unfinished masterpiece, the Conte del Graal (Story of the Grail). This text is the first to mention the banquet serving dish that became the Holy Grail in early efforts to rewrite or complete the text. This book focuses on the Conte's narrative depiction of mirrors real and metaphorical: shining armor, a polished golden eagle, the Grail itself, St. Paul's enigmatic looking glass, the blood drops in snow in which Perceval sees the face of his beloved. The last chapter joins the controversy over Chretien's intended conclusion, and proposes a climactic ending in which Perceval, heir to the Grail kingdom, confronts his double, Gawain, heir to Arthur's Logres.

Perceval and Gawain in Dark Mirrors

Perceval and Gawain in Dark Mirrors PDF Author: Rupert T. Pickens
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476618593
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
An innovative author of verse romance, Chretien de Troyes wrote in northern France between 1170 and 1190. Credited with the first Arthurian romance, he composed five works set in King Arthur's court, culminating with an unfinished masterpiece, the Conte del Graal (Story of the Grail). This text is the first to mention the banquet serving dish that became the Holy Grail in early efforts to rewrite or complete the text. This book focuses on the Conte's narrative depiction of mirrors real and metaphorical: shining armor, a polished golden eagle, the Grail itself, St. Paul's enigmatic looking glass, the blood drops in snow in which Perceval sees the face of his beloved. The last chapter joins the controversy over Chretien's intended conclusion, and proposes a climactic ending in which Perceval, heir to the Grail kingdom, confronts his double, Gawain, heir to Arthur's Logres.

Narcissism and Selfhood in Medieval French Literature

Narcissism and Selfhood in Medieval French Literature PDF Author: Nicholas Ealy
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030279162
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
This book offers analyses of texts from medieval France influenced by Ovid’s myth of Narcissus including the Lay of Narcissus, Alain de Lille’s Plaint of Nature, René d’Anjou’s Love-Smitten Heart, Chrétien de Troyes’s Story of the Grail and Guillaume de Machaut’s Fountain of Love. Together, these texts form a corpus exploring human selfhood as wounded and undone by desire. Emerging in the twelfth century in Western Europe, this discourse of the wounded self has survived with ever-increasing importance, informing contemporary methods of theoretical inquiry into mourning, melancholy, trauma and testimony. Taking its cue from the moment Narcissus bruises himself upon learning he cannot receive the love he wants from his reflection, this book argues that the construct of the wounded self emphasizes fantasy over reality, and that only through the world of the imagination—of literature itself—can our narcissistic injuries seemingly be healed and desire fulfilled.

Piers Plowman and the Poetics of Enigma

Piers Plowman and the Poetics of Enigma PDF Author: Curtis A. Gruenler
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
ISBN: 0268101655
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 524

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Book Description
In this book, Curtis Gruenler proposes that the concept of the enigmatic, latent in a wide range of medieval thinking about literature, can help us better understand in medieval terms much of the era’s most enduring literature, from the riddles of the Anglo-Saxon bishop Aldhelm to the great vernacular works of Dante, Chaucer, Julian of Norwich, and, above all, Langland’s Piers Plowman. Riddles, rhetoric, and theology—the three fields of meaning of aenigma in medieval Latin—map a way of thinking about reading and writing obscure literature that was widely shared across the Middle Ages. The poetics of enigma links inquiry about language by theologians with theologically ambitious literature. Each sense of enigma brings out an aspect of this poetics. The playfulness of riddling, both oral and literate, was joined to a Christian vision of literature by Aldhelm and the Old English riddles of the Exeter Book. Defined in rhetoric as an obscure allegory, enigma was condemned by classical authorities but resurrected under the influence of Augustine as an aid to contemplation. Its theological significance follows from a favorite biblical verse among medieval theologians, “We see now through a mirror in an enigma, then face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12). Along with other examples of the poetics of enigma, Piers Plowman can be seen as a culmination of centuries of reflection on the importance of obscure language for knowing and participating in endless mysteries of divinity and humanity and a bridge to the importance of the enigmatic in modern literature. This book will be especially useful for scholars and undergraduate students interested in medieval European literature, literary theory, and contemplative theology.

Perceval and Gawain in Dark Mirrors

Perceval and Gawain in Dark Mirrors PDF Author: Rupert T. Pickens
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786494387
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
An innovative author of verse romance, Chretien de Troyes wrote in northern France between 1170 and 1190. Credited with the first Arthurian romance, he composed five works set in King Arthur's court, culminating with an unfinished masterpiece, the Conte del Graal (Story of the Grail). This text is the first to mention the banquet serving dish that became the Holy Grail in early efforts to rewrite or complete the text. This book focuses on the Conte's narrative depiction of mirrors real and metaphorical: shining armor, a polished golden eagle, the Grail itself, St. Paul's enigmatic looking glass, the blood drops in snow in which Perceval sees the face of his beloved. The last chapter joins the controversy over Chretien's intended conclusion, and proposes a climactic ending in which Perceval, heir to the Grail kingdom, confronts his double, Gawain, heir to Arthur's Logres.

The Return of King Arthur

The Return of King Arthur PDF Author: Diana Durham
Publisher: Tarcher
ISBN: 9781585423811
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
An elegant, sweeping, modern-day Jungian interpretation of the two strands of Arthurian myth: the Round Table, Camelot, and King Arthur on one side, and the Grail quest on the other. The quest for the Holy Grail is, in a larger sense, the story of the individual's path to wholeness, while the King Arthur legends represent a collective narrative of humanity. In The Return of King Arthur, Diana Durham analyzes the key symbols from the intertwined Arthurian myths. Woven through the narrative are discoveries from her personal search for wholeness. Her exploration of the individual path-the Grail quest-and the collective process-the court of King Arthur-eventually resolves itself as one story, offering the reader insights into how they can have a more satisfying existence. Durham has deciphered the deepest meaning of the Arthurian myths as they relate to our modern lives, and, in the process, uncovered the reasons why they have held our fascination for so long.

Michael Psellos

Michael Psellos PDF Author: Stratis Papaioannou
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107067529
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
This book explores Michael Psellos' place in the history of Greek rhetoric and self-representation and his impact on the development of Byzantine literature. Avoiding the modern dilemma that vacillates between Psellos the pompous rhetorician and Psellos the ingenious thinker, Professor Papaioannou unravels the often misunderstood Byzantine rhetoric, its rich discursive tradition and the social fabric of elite Constantinopolitan culture which rhetoric addressed. The book offers close readings of Psellos' personal letters, speeches, lectures and historiographical narratives, and analysis of other early Byzantine and classical models of authorship in Byzantine book culture, such as Gregory of Nazianzos, Synesios of Cyrene, Hermogenes and Plato. It also details Psellos' innovative attention to authorial creativity, performative mimesis and the aesthetics of the self. Simultaneously, it traces within Byzantium complex expressions of emotion and gender, notions of authorship and subjectivity, and theories of fictionality and literature, challenging the common fallacy that these are modern inventions.

Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature

Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature PDF Author: Frank Northen Magill
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
Provides individual essay-reviews of 500 titles, series, and collections written by some of the most respected writers of fantasy. Also includes 19 topical essays, Chronology, and Annotated bibliography and a Bibliography of fantasy anthologies.

Psellos and the Patriarchs

Psellos and the Patriarchs PDF Author: Michael Psellos
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780268175146
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Contains translations of the funeral orations written by Michael Psellos, the leading Byzantine intellectual of the eleventh century, for the three ecumenical patriarchs of Constantinople.

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men PDF Author: David Foster Wallace
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316086894
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
In this thought-provoking and playful short story collection, David Foster Wallace nudges at the boundaries of fiction with inimitable wit and seductive intelligence. Wallace's stories present a world where the bizarre and the banal are interwoven and where hideous men appear in many guises. Among the stories are 'The Depressed Person,' a dazzling and blackly humorous portrayal of a woman's mental state; 'Adult World,' which reveals a woman's agonized consideration of her confusing sexual relationship with her husband; and 'Brief Interviews with Hideous Men,' a dark, hilarious series of imagined interviews with men on the subject of their relations with women. Wallace delights in leftfield observation, mining the absurd, the surprising, and the illuminating from every situation. This collection will enthrall DFW fans, and provides a perfect introduction for new readers.

The Time Out Film Guide

The Time Out Film Guide PDF Author: Tom Milne
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 792

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Book Description