The Literature of Hope in the Middle Ages and Today

The Literature of Hope in the Middle Ages and Today PDF Author: Flo Keyes
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786425962
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 207

Get Book

Book Description
The influence of medieval literature is instantly apparent in modern fantasy literature, where knights and wizards populate castle-strewn landscapes. Less obvious but still recognizable is the influence in science fiction, which draws on medieval story structure and themes. Beyond these superficial similarities, deeper connections become evident through an analysis of the literature's social function. Like the fantasy and science fiction of today, the romances of the Middle Ages were written in times of extreme and prolonged social upheaval. In all three genres, the storytellers draw on the same archetypes--the hero, the quest, the transformation--for stories whose goal is to provide hope. Using Jungian theory and comparative analysis, this book explores the connections between the three genres. It finds common ground among them in plots that often reflect the recurring cycle of life and the elements of psychological rather than literal realism. Representative texts such as Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur, the Witch World series by Andre Norton and More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon are examined in depth, and the use of archetypes in each is thoroughly explored. Analysis reveals similarities in images, structures, and the pervasive belief that a perfectible universe is within man's capabilities--if not now, then someday.

Marguerite Makes a Book

Marguerite Makes a Book PDF Author: Bruce Robertson
Publisher: Getty Publications
ISBN: 9780892363728
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 44

Get Book

Book Description
In medieval Paris, Marguerite helps her nearly blind father finish painting an illuminated manuscript for his patron, Lady Isabelle. 46 color illustrations.

Lovesickness in the Middle Ages

Lovesickness in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Mary Frances Wack
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1512809535
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 372

Get Book

Book Description
According to medieval physicians, lovesickness was an illness of mind and body caused by sexual desire and the sight of beauty. The notorious agony of an unhappy lover was treated as an ailment closely related to melancholia and potentially fatal if not treated. In Lovesickness in the Middle Ages, Mary F. Wack uses newly discovered texts and takes a fresh look at primary sources to offer the first comprehensive analysis of the forms and meanings of the lover's malady in medieval culture. She examines its importance in medieval literature and its role in the transformation of courtly love from literary convention to social practice. Drawing extensively from the Viaticum and its commentaries, studied for centuries in medical schools, Wack also addresses wider questions about the cultural construction of illness, the conflict between medicine and Church morality, the relations between lovesickness and gender, and the lover's malady as a form of behavior in late medieval society. The second part of the book contains annotated editions and translations of six important texts on lovesickness—the Viaticum and four commentaries on it. Forty-six black-and-white illustrations provide a striking visual perspective on medieval love and medicine. Lovesickness in the Middle Ages will interest literary scholars and students as well as historians of medicine, sexuality, psychology, and women's studies.

Tracing the Trails in the Medieval World

Tracing the Trails in the Medieval World PDF Author: Albrecht Classen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000205029
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Get Book

Book Description
Every human being knows that we are walking through life following trails, whether we are aware of them or not. Medieval poets, from the anonymous composer of Beowulf to Marie de France, Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried von Strassburg, and Guillaume de Lorris to Petrarch and Heinrich Kaufringer, predicated their works on the notion of the trail and elaborated on its epistemological function. We can grasp here an essential concept that determines much of medieval and early modern European literature and philosophy, addressing the direction which all protagonists pursue, as powerfully illustrated also by the anonymous poets of Herzog Ernst and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Dante’s Divina Commedia, in fact, proves to be one of the most explicit poetic manifestations of the fundamental idea of the trail, but we find strong parallels also in powerful contemporary works such as Guillaume de Deguileville’s Pèlerinage de la vie humaine and in many mystical tracts.

European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages

European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages PDF Author: Ernst Robert Curtius
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691157006
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 690

Get Book

Book Description
Published just after the Second World War, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages is a sweeping exploration of the remarkable continuity of European literature across time and place, from the classical era up to the early nineteenth century, and from the Italian peninsula to the British Isles. In what T. S. Eliot called a "magnificent" book, Ernst Robert Curtius establishes medieval Latin literature as the vital transition between the literature of antiquity and the vernacular literatures of later centuries. The result is nothing less than a masterful synthesis of European literature from Homer to Goethe. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages is a monumental work of literary scholarship. In a new introduction, Colin Burrow provides critical insights into Curtius's life and ideas and highlights the distinctive importance of this wonderful book.

Walsingham in Literature and Culture from the Middle Ages to Modernity

Walsingham in Literature and Culture from the Middle Ages to Modernity PDF Author: Dominic Janes
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351874039
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Get Book

Book Description
Walsingham was medieval England's most important shrine to the Virgin Mary and a popular pilgrimage site. Following its modern revival it is also well known today. For nearly a thousand years, it has been the subject of, or referred to in, music, poetry and novels (by for instance Langland, Erasmus, Sidney, Shakespeare, Hopkins, Eliot and Lowell). But only in the last twenty years or so has it received serious scholarly attention. This volume represents the first collection of multi-disciplinary essays on Walsingham's broader cultural significance. Contributors to this book focus on the hitherto neglected issue of Walsingham's cultural impact: the literary, historical, art historical and sociological significance that Walsingham has had for over six hundred years. The collection's essays consider connections between landscape and the sacred, the body and sexuality and Walsingham's place in literature, music and, more broadly, especially since the Reformation, in the construction of cultural memory. The historical range of the essays includes Walsingham's rise to prominence in the later Middle Ages, its destruction during the English Reformation, and the presence of uncanny echoes and traces in early modern English culture, including poems, ballads, music and some of the plays of Shakespeare. Contributions also examine the cultural dynamics of the remarkable revival of Walsingham as a place of pilgrimage and as a cultural icon in the Victorian and modern periods. Hitherto, scholarship on Walsingham has been almost entirely confined to the history of religion. In contrast, contributors to this volume include internationally known scholars from literature, cultural studies, history, sociology, anthropology and musicology as well as theology.

Medieval Children

Medieval Children PDF Author: Nicholas Orme
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300097542
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404

Get Book

Book Description
Looks at the lives of children, from birth to adolescence, in medieval England.

Theologies of Hope in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

Theologies of Hope in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries PDF Author: Christopher Dyczek
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527551717
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book

Book Description
This book is a translation of J. G. Bougerol's research, and positions this in relation to recent post-doctoral studies of the Summa Halensis from King's College, London. It identifies literary aspects of religious fears in medieval and nineteenth century theology as both a New Testament and a scholastic problem. Academically trained preachers, in European culture, are viewed through the lens of dynamic community language, and Franciscan initiatives for confident, peace-seeking theology are mapped out in detail.

The Book and the Magic of Reading in the Middle Ages

The Book and the Magic of Reading in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Albrecht Classen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135677743
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 343

Get Book

Book Description
The computer revolution is upon us. The future of books and of reading are debated. Will there be books in the next millennium? Will we still be reading? As uncertain as the answers to these questions might be, as clear is the message about the value of the book expressed by medieval writers. The contributors to the volume The Book and the Magic of Reading in the Middle Ages explore the significance of the written document as the key icon of a whole era. Both philosophers and artists, both poets and clerics wholeheartedly subscribed to the notion that reading and writing represented essential epistemological tools for spiritual, political, religious, and philosophical quests. To gain a deeper understanding of the cultural significance of the medieval book, the contributors to this volume examine pertinent statements by medieval philosophers and French, German, English, Spanish, and Italian poets.

Literary Patronage in the Middle Ages ...

Literary Patronage in the Middle Ages ... PDF Author: Karl Julius Holzknecht
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Authors and patrons
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Get Book

Book Description