bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Authority of Text: Nicholas of Lyra's Judaeo-Christian Hermeneutic and The Canterbury Tales
Authors: Wauhkonen Rhonda
Published: March 2021

The approach to Chaucer's narrative construct suggested by the title of my paper may appear some what indirect: what I seem to be attempting is to account for the structure of a fourteenth-century English poem, and an ostensibly "secular" one at that, from the exegetical principles of an early fourteenth-century French friar. In a general sense, this is my endeavour. I am not, however, attempting to demonstrate an unmediated or one-toone dependence by Chaucer upon the exegesis of Nicholas (though this is possible given the widespread popularity of Nicholas's Postillae).1 Instead, and more specifically, I wish to indicate certain aspects of a distinctive semiotic which undergirds Nicholas's exegesis and which also seems to be useful in understanding the structuring principles of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Fundamentally a Hebraic sign system which streamlines the process of reference, Nicholas's unique semiotic directs the reader through verbal and physical appearances to the ultimate Truth underlying all texts. It also shapes his particular understanding of the sensus literalis, governing that in a text which may be appropriately included under "the literal sense." More comprehensive than conventional notions of the "literal," Nicholas encompasses typology and metaphor as well as all figurative language. Countering the simplistic understanding of a four-fold system of signification whereby any given text is a potential candidate for literal, moral, allegorical, and anagogical readings, Nicholas's articulation of the literal thus re-focusses contemporary critical attention on the text itself rather than on accumulated literary, spiritual, and intellectual traditions of interpretation (such as is represented by the Glossa ordinaria). Privileging issues of authority, reference, and response, it thereby alters the critical face of fourteenth-century reading by making available a uniquely alinear, associative, yet referential method of engaging (and being engaged by) texts. In the hands of the poets, most notably those of Chaucer, this hermeneutic may well have provided one pattern for not only the reading of but also the composition of texts as well.
The "Double Sorwe" of The Wife of Bath: Chaucer and the Misogynist Tradition
Authors: Wurtele Douglas
Published: March 2021

There are several historical approaches that might be taken to the lengthy discourse of Alisoun, Chaucer's Wife of Bath. From the dated one known as exegetical criticism, her revelations mark her as a "hopelessly carnal and literal" exegete of holy scripture (Robertson 317). In this view, she serves to represent and embody the very complaints that moralists were making about widows who re-marry and wives who demand sexual pleasure. Hence she rails against the admonitions of "clerkes," particularly the "cardinal, that highte Seint Jerome" (674).1 Chaucer, devoted to the poet's moral duty to set forth in his fictions examples of caritas and cupiditas, is thus exhibiting in Alisoun living proof of precisely those wrongdoings that the Wife, to her anger, has heard condemned by church authorities. The most minor of these is her own admitted tendency to gossip (531-42). Various authorities, among them Thomas Aquinas and Gulielmus Peraldus, whose Summa vitiorum figures in the Parson's Tale, "repeatedly denounced female chatter as the scource of the new age and called for its suppression" (Dalarun 40). When more serious charges are examined, she is seen in context as, supposedly, Chaucer means her to be seen: an offender against incontrovertible moral and social codes.
Steingerđr's Nicknames for Bersi (Kormáks SagaImplications for Gender, Politics, and Poetics
Authors: Sayers William
Published: March 2021

When the marriage contracted between Kormákr and Steingerơr is not realized due to the curse by the sorceress ƥơrveig and Kormákr's vacillation, the young woman is given by her family to the widower Bersi Véleifsson of Saurbrer, a cousin of óláfr pai and descendant of the matriarch Auðr djúpauðga. Bersi is wealthy and is renowned as a juridical duellist. Like the hero of the saga Bersi is a poet, but their temperaments and reputations are significantly different. The quarrelsome Kormá.kr continues to pay his attentions to Steingerðr long after the marriage. This leads to two challenges to single combat according to the formal rules of hÓlmganga. The alternating blows, from which the antagonists were protected by shields held by their "seconds," were suspended at first blood. Bersi and his party win the first encounter in ambiguous fashion, when the tip of Bersi's sword is broken off but still splits Kormákr's thumb. Given the erotic ambience of the saga, this injury is consonant with the psychological impediment or sexual dysfunction resulting from the curse by ƥÒrveig, whose sons Kormákr had killed (Sayers 1992). Kormákr rejects the magical stone associated with Bersi's sword to assist the recovery from the injury, just as he is impatient with the ritual associated with magically endowed weapons or the acquisition of partial invulnerability in combat. In a second duel Kormákr's uncle Steinarr, also a fighter of repute, faces Bersi, while the irascible poet holds the shield. Steinaxr’s sword glances from the shield held before Bersi, clips one buttock, and buries itself in the bone at the side of his knee. Yet Bersi is able to strike a blow that splits Steinarr’s shield and reaches his chest. A halt is called and the dubious victory goes to the other party. Bersi’s leg wound is the more serious of the two and is slow to heal.
The Book within the Book in Mediaeval Illumination
Authors: Cotter James Finn
Published: March 2021

From early Christian times up to the sixteenth century, books occur so often in mediaeval illumination that a study of the book as it appears within the book would involve a survey of the whole course of Western miniature painting. Despite its ubiquity, however, little has been written on the subject of the symbolism of the book in art. In The Idea of the Book in the Middle Ages, Jesse M. Gellrich takes a semiotic approach rather than the viewpoint of art history. Ernst Curtius has a chapter on “The Book as a Symbol” in his classic European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, but he does not concern himself with artistic representation. Even so, he admits, “The subject, so far as I am aware, has hitherto been touched upon by no one but Goethe” (302). The same is true of the presence of the book in art.
Ammianus Marcellinus’s Use of Exempla
Authors: Blockley Roger
Published: March 2021

The Latin word exemplum is related to the verb eximere (“to take from” or “to take out of”) and in its literal sense indicates a sample that accurately represents the whole. The force of “accurate representation” is extended to the ethical and educational use of an exemplum as an act or a saying (or a combination of both) that stands as an exemplar of an action or an attitude (usually reflecting a vice or a virtue) to be imitated or avoided. The Romans habitually taught by example and argued through example; and the strong ethical colouring, as well as the anecdotal structure, which this process imparts, comes through in many of their writings.
The “Sermons” of English Romance
Authors: Jennings Margaret
Published: March 2021

The influence of sermon content on mediaeval secular literature has long been acknowledged. Widening the trail blazed by Gerald Owst in 1933, Siegfried Wenzel has recently identified sermon material in the fabliaux, the drama, the epic, and, very extensively, in the mediaeval lyric.1 Evidence for the usage of sermon formats, however, is considerably harder to develop, although efforts to do so—both brilliant and bizarre—have certainly been attempted.2 Many of the difficulties arise because the homily style in preaching design that had been dominant until the twelth century and remained a viable option especially in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries was too unique and personalized to the individual sermon giver to be reduced to a scheme. In addition, the more organized pattern of preaching, which today is called “scholastic,” “university-style,” or more correctly “thematic,” vied for prominence with the homily throughout most of the mediaeval period. Only in the fourteenth century, and probably only in England where manuals on thematic design and sermons thus organized flourished, can the effect of a prescribed preaching structure on non-religious writing be easily discerned. Such a discovery occurs when certain unusually-shaped passages in English metrical romance are measured against thematic formats.
The Late Anglo-Saxon Psalter: Ancestor of the Book of Hours?
Authors: Toswell M. J.
Published: March 2021

In the introduction to her book, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, Beryl Smalley remarks that the Bible was “the most studied book of the middle ages,” and that “the language and the content of Scripture permeate medieval thought” (xi). This concern with the basic text of the Christian faith was felt in early medieval England as much as anywhere else in Christendom. Bede, for instance, highly prized his own commentaries on the books of the Bible, and at the end of his life was translating the gospel of St John into the vernacular. The Codex Amiatinus, the Lindisfarne and Rushworth gospels are all de luxe manuscripts, are all produced in insular scriptoria, and are all beautifully laid out and gloriously illustrated copies of these biblical texts. Perhaps more important, the latter two of these codices were copiously glossed in the vernacular, a process which, to the modern eye at least, disturbs the visual splendour of the manuscript, but which proves that study and understanding of the text was of great importance to the Northumbrian monks who used the manuscripts. Similarly, many of the psalters of Anglo-Saxon England were glossed, illustrated, or otherwise laid out in such a way as to suggest careful study of the text.
“On Account of Scandal...”: Priests, their Children and the Ecclesiastical Demand for Celebacy
Authors: Taglia Kathryn Ann
Published: March 2021

By the late Middle Ages canon law demanded that the higher orders of clerics lead a celibate life. In reality, however, throughout the medieval period and into the early modern era a significant minority fell far from this ideal. Children, born after their fathers had taken vows to the higher orders, were visible evidence of their fathers’ failure to uphold these ecclesiastical standards. The anthropologist Mary Douglas argues that cultural systems need to be able to control or restrict anomalous or ambiguous events that might overturn their organizing principles and threaten their integrity. Through an examination of French synodal legislation from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, I will display how the ecclesiastical cultural system worked to maintain the principle of celibacy and its own integrity by turning these children into moral and legal outsiders whose very existence is a source of scandal and moral contagion to be avoided or contained. In this context medieval ecclesiastical officials situated these offspring, particularly the sons of priests, as the source of all cultural contradictions inherent in ideas about clerical celibacy, marriage, and the control of ecclesiastical resources. Furthermore, by delegitimizing these sons and then granting them access back into the ecclesiastical system through the mechanism of the dispensation, the advocates of clerical celibacy were able to triumph culturally in spite of the challenges to their ideals that the existence of these children presented.
"Scandle is Heaued Sunne"
Authors: Bryan Lindsay
Published: March 2021

Thus the author of the early thirteenth-century Ancrene Wisse describes scandal — anything done or said so as to incite others to sin — as a capital fault. His contemporary, Thomas of Chobham, concludes his Summa Confessorum with a section on the sin of scandal — a great sin, he says, which few confess. As an example of the gravity of scandal, Thomas cites a hypothetical fornicating priest, who sins twice: once in the act and again in scandalizing his parishioners, who might be tempted to follow his example. Thomas’s work was intended for the use of priests hearing confession; clearly, clergy of all ranks would have been expected to be familiar with the church’s doctrine on all important points of theology, including scandal. How was this particular teaching interpreted on the practical level, and what were its implications for the relationships of ordinary men and women? This paper will look at both the theory and the practice of scandal as sin, in an effort to see how it functioned in medieval England. It will draw upon some cases of wife abuse in bishops’ registers from around 1300 to see the way in which this important form of scandal, real or threatened, worked to control behaviour — in this case particularly within marriage.
Thoughts on Renaut's Use of Marie's Fresne in Galeran de Bretagne
Authors: Brumlik Joan
Published: March 2021

In 1928 Maurice Wilmotte accused Renaut, whom he accepted as the author of Galeran de Bretagne, of plagiarism. He expresses his regret: “Car c’est un gros mot que celui de plagiat, et il faut tourner sept fois sa plume dans l’encrier avant de se résoudre à l’employer. L’accusation est toujours grave” (Wilmotte 3). Today we know that what Wilmotte called plagiarism was more encouraged than looked down upon by Renaut and his contemporaries. Writers delighted in creating variations on known themes, concepts, and words, to compare themselves favourably with, or express their respect for, an admired master. In this case, according to Wilmotte, the authors emulated were primarily Chrétien and Marie but perhaps Jean Renart as well (Wilmotte 6).
Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest in Middle English Literature
Authors: Gasse Rosanne
Published: March 2021

One of the bugbears of Piers Plowman criticism has always been the definition of Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest. The attempts to elucidate these terms have been many — the best known perhaps being those that have been based upon a critical desire to equate the triad of Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest with respectively the triads of the Active, Contemplative, and Mixed lives, or the unitive, purgative, and illuminative stages of mysticism. One immediate problem with the first in particular is Will’s explicit statement in the Ctext that there are “but tweyne lyves’ (XVIII.81) and Liberum Arbitrium’s explanation as to why then the Tree of Charity bears three kinds of fruit. Liberum Arbitrium does not contradict Will’s belief in the existence of only two Lives, even as he describes the three fruits of charity: another seemingly separate triad of marriage, widowhood, and virginity. In the end one is sorely tempted to agree with Mary Carruthers that attempts to relate Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest to ways of life or sections of the poem are based on fundamentally wrong assumptions (9).
Brevity in Early Medieval Letters
Authors: Abram Suzanne
Published: March 2021

A medieval truism holds that a letter must be short. The Benedictine monk Alberic of Monte Cassino, writing in the late eleventh century, advised letter writers that the central portion of the letter, the narratio, "will be quite good if it is short and clear." Much earlier, in the fourth century, Julius Victor had offered much the same recommendation. An official letter, he wrote, should attempt a terse mode of expression and restricted oratory. In private letters, however, brevity was even more important:
The Closed World?: Finding the Innumerable in Medieval Encyclopedism
Authors: Ronquist E.C.
Published: March 2021

Those who think both about early encydopedism and the Middle Ages may find themselves stalled at the beginning of the title of Alexandre Koyré's classic study in the history of science, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe. It is not, however, the history of the conception of empty space that concerns me here so much as the notion that if intellectual history has a first or early chapter picturing the "Middle Ages," it is likely to speak of closed systems, since modernism has to have something less modern—less progressive, reformed, scientific—to start from—a seed that has not yet sprouted, a nutshell with a kernel of allegorical claim to a simple truth. Those of us assigned to make representations of that or those Middle Ages say early on every year that people then did not necessarily think the world flat, and, if there is time, we go on to talk about voyages of exploration or we attempt a dialogue about sects and religions. But there still may be a claim that a desire for closure typified the Middle Ages—dated 500-1500, according to the Medieval Academy of America. Then again, "medieval" may be the term for a certain mindset and need not be fixed within dates: thus for closure of time, rather than of space, the Middle Ages have been found to predominate into the eighteenth century.
Authority in Middle English Proverb Literature
Authors: Louis Cameron
Published: March 2021

Proverbs are one method by which an ideology can be taught. They are pithy, memorable phrases and sentences that encapsulate guidance for behaviour in ethical situations or a particular view of the way the world functions or ought to function. If an individual saying becomes proverbial, it becomes part of the "common sense" and ideology of the culture in which it is used, a means by which people can be made to behave and perceive according to verbal reflexes, without recourse to thought (Cram 90-92). But if any piece of language is to affect the way people think and behave, it has to have authority. Folk proverbs carry their own authority within themselves. They do not need a source attribution for their validity; if everyone in the speech community recognises them as 'proverbial,' then the tradition behind them in itself gives them authority. Political and religious institutions, especially authoritarian ones, have long been aware of the power of the proverb to influence behaviour. In the medieval church, this acknowledgment sometimes took the form of the collection of popular proverbs by the clergy for the use of all, and at other times was manifested in the use of vernacular proverbs in the text of Latin sermons (Wenzel 80). But another possible reaction is to create new 'proverbs' which are more conducive to the ideology of the institution, in contrast to the undependable and sometimes ambiguous morality of folk proverbs, either by composing them or by finding them in written sources. Dictators like Mao Zedong have attempted to proverbialise their own sayings, which the populace is forcibly taught to mouth and bear in mind, so that it will behave and perceive in ways that are acceptable to authority. There is evidence that the English church also attempted to create its own body of proverbs during the Middle English period, for a substantial body of literature survives from that time which consists of lists of proverbial advice. Much of this literature appears to be an attempt to make use of the concept of the proverb, which had an oral tradition that went back to pre-literate, and pre-Christian times, but in a way more reliably conducive to a world-view and behaviour consistent with Christian dogma. These sayings were not really proverbial in the traditional sense, but more like direct, straight-forward instruction or advice. However, they seem nevertheless to have been regarded as 'proverbs' at the time, whether they originated with the church or not (Louis). In any case, because the new proverbs lacked the automatic authority of popular proverbs, they had to be framed in contexts which attempted to substitute a different kind of moral authority for the 'proverbial' utterances. These legitimising contexts were basically three: the domestic circumstance of a parent instructing a child; the more public situation of a ruler or philosopher instructing the people; and florilegia-like collections in which numerous utterances are attributed to various figures of history.
Inclusion and Exclusion in Guillaume de Lorris' Roman de la Rose
Authors: Brook Leslie C.
Published: March 2021

In all narrative literature the reader or listener is necessarily an outsider, who is then admitted by the narrator as a spectator of the events described. The reader's emotions, intellect, or moral sense will be affected by the unfolding of the tale and the plight of the characters presented, but a reader can never be part of their fictional lives or engage with them in a two-way sense. It is common, though, for the narrator, or through the narrator one or other of the characters, to address the reader at specific moments, as, for instance, in the case of the well-known intervention and reassurance in Jane Eyre: "Reader, I married him." The narrator's role within the creation of a fictional text has been much explored, as has the autonomy of the created characters who, since they represent a projection of a form of lived reality, will find themselves at times the centre of the action related, and at others on the margins or absent, depending on the narrative focus. This can be true, too, of a principal character or eponymous hero even in a first-person narrative, if the narrator is playing the omniscient role or benefiting from knowledge subsequent to the events being described, as happens in the case of Guillaume de Lorris' Roman de la Rose.
Cluster on the Middle Ages in Contemporary Popular Culture: Introduction
Authors: Fast Susan
Published: March 2021

The five essays here published were first given at a conference entitled The Middle Ages in Contemporary Popular Culture, conceived by Madeleine Jeay of the McMaster Working Group on the Middle Ages and Renaissance, organised by that group and held at McMaster University in the spring of 1996. The twenty-eight papers given at the conference explored various themes concerning the ways in which the middle ages are represented in contemporary popular culture. Among these were studies of the renewed interest in witchcraft and alchemy; organisations such as the Society for Creative Anachronism and feast-extravaganza Medieval Times, which engage in historical reconstruction; the popular interest in Gregorian chant and other medieval musics; and the "use" of the middle ages in contemporary film and other media. The aim was to give voice to this phenomenon in our culture in a manner that was sympathetic, not judgmental—a manner that took the appropriation of aspects of the middle ages in our popular culture seriously and that tried to theorise this appropriation in order that we can better understand it.
Postmodern Middle Ages: Medieval Music at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century
Authors: Kreutziger-Herr Annette
Published: March 2021

In the October 1995 issue of Good Housekeeping, there appears an advertisement for a new "Barbie Collector's Series," featuring for the first time a doll called "Medieval Lady Barbie." Clad in a precious garment of the high Gothic style, this icon of our time is a dramatic representation of how the Middle Ages are perceived in popular culture at the end of the twentieth century. Medieval Lady Barbie is certainly not meant to function as an historically accurate document: she is first of all a toy, one of Mattel's many collector's series toys (compare Ebersole/Peabody 16, and Rand 164), and the use of a medieval garment for this twentiety-century doll illustrates that the Middle Ages have become a kind of treasure trove that can be mined in any way we like; they have become a kind of "queer accessory," as Erica Rand has expressed it in her anthropological study of the Barbie. By using a medieval dress, the maker does not wish to allude to the Middle Ages as a whole; rather, he wishes to play with isolated aspects of the distant era. The dress has a strangely comforting quality about it and an emotional nearness that is both apparent and mysterious. These qualities stem not from the Barbie, nor from the medieval accessory alone, but from the combination. The imagined dialogue between the Middle Ages and the twentieth century should convey an assurance to the modern reader that, amidst all the social, cultural, and political chaos present at the dawn of the twenty-first century, there are constants in our cultural understanding of ourselves, in our cultural identity. The reality, of course, is that there is no dialogue going on. The Middle Ages has its twentieth-century speakers; the past can never speak for itself. The present takes over this function, for it has tamed the Middle Ages.
Plainchant in Motion Pictures: The "Dies irae" in Film Scores
Authors: Schubert Linda
Published: March 2021

Several summers ago, the album Chant, a collection of plainsong performed by the monks of Santo Domingo de Silos, hit the top of the popular music charts, triggering the release and reissue of more chant albums by other groups. These included Greatest Hits—Chant, Mad About the Monks, and Chill to the Chant. In the meantime, the monks of Santo Domingo de Silos have followed up Chant with several other albums (Chant Noel, Chant II, Easter), and there is also a Chant video (see Chant, Visions, and Requiem). Though it may seem that plainchant has only just been discovered in popular culture, it has been heard for many years in film, a medium with strong ties to popular as well as "art" audiences. Some chants have become standard melodies for films, in particular the "Dies irae" from the Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead. The "Dies irae" is, in fact, one of the most frequently heard chants in film, used in television theme songs, commercials, and even a Christmas film (It's a Wonderful Life). Death, danger or the supernatural are invariably part of the story or visual situation where it is used.
Remaking Medieval Heroism: Nationalism and Sexuality in Braveheart
Authors: Sharp Michael D.
Published: March 2021

Mel Gibson's movie Braveheart tells the story of the life of William Wallace, one of Scodand's great national heroes. Originally released in the late spring of 1995, the film received predominandy glowing reviews, and later in the year enjoyed a second run in theatres as Paramount Studios began marketing the film for consideration in the many end-of-the-year awards shows. Early in 1996 Mel Gibson was honoured at the Golden Globe Awards as the year's Best Director, and in March of the same year, Braveheart won five Academy Awards, including another Best Director award for Gibson as well as the award for Best Motion Picture of the Year.
Preface
Authors: Norman Joanne
Published: March 2021

This issue of Florilegium is dedicated to its originator and longtime editor, Dr Douglas J. Wurtele, professor emeritus of Carleton University in Ottawa. The Canadian Society of Medievalists/Societe canadienne des medievistes takes great pleasure in this opportunity to mark the scholarly achievements and professional contributions to medieval studies of one of its best-known and most respected members. With the support of several enthusiastic colleagues, Dr Wurtele began Florilegium more than twenty years ago as an interdisciplinary journal for classical and medieval studies. For a long time, that journal was one of the few venues in which Canadian medievalists might communicate with one another. It is not surprising then that, given his dedication to fostering medieval studies in Canada, Dr Wurtele became one of the earliest active supporters of the new Canadian Society of Medievalists/Societe canadienne des medievistes when it was first organised in 1993. The association of Florilegium with the Society was proposed almost from the beginning, when Dr Wurtele made a very generous offer to the Society that would be of enormous benefit to both the journal and CSM/SCM. It was expected then that he would continue to edit Florilegium and that the Society would be able to rely on his wide experience in running a scholarly journal. His expertise had also been conspicuous during his very successful tenure as editor of English Studies in Canada for the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE). Unfortunately, Dr Wurtele had to resign as editor because of ill health. Despite this setback, he worked as hard as ever to complete the final issue under his direction and turned over to our new editor, Dr Jane Toswell, a smoothly-functioning journal.
Stitches in Time: Medieval Embroidery in its Social Setting
Authors: Labarge Margaret Wade
Published: March 2021

Embroidery was an important decorative element in medieval art, known to exist but often overlooked. The surviving examples of the extraordinarily beautiful works created by the elegant stitches of a multitude of mostly unknown embroiderers over the centuries tend to be casually admired but intellectually overlooked. This survey does not deal with the techniques and methods of medieval embroiderers, but endeavours to draw attention to the place of embroidery as an overlooked component of medieval social history.
Such Joy at the Heart: Lord Berners’ Huon de Bordeaux
Authors: Cameron M. I.
Published: March 2021

"It is the supreme and splendid triumph of looking shallow and being deep," writes G.K. Chesterton, of "all French literature and philosophy." He may or may not be right about the French, but precisely that, looking shallow and being deep, is the triumph of the two great masters of English prose at the end of the Middle Ages, Thomas Malory and John Bourchier, Lord Berners. Both shared, appropriately enough, a passion for French literature, and that was not all, for they both wrote in that spirit that Richard Hooker articulated, memorably, years later, "that posterity may know we have not loosely through silence permitted things to pass away as in a dream." A world was passing away before them. They longed to capture and recreate imaginatively what they cherished in it, and where they succeeded in that intention, there their work runs deepest. So, at least, I will argue about Huon de Bordeaux in this paper, Huon being the first of Berners' two great literary achievements. In making my argument I will look at Berners' language, at aspects of his narrative, and at the surprising things he affirms with his jaunty and hard-edged materials.
Genre of Genre: Sidney and Defences of Poetry
Authors: Moore Michael D.
Published: March 2021

At the centre of this essay lies a reconsideration of an elusive spirit lurking amid the conventional classical, medieval, and Renaissance gestures of Sir Philip Sidney's Apologie for Poetrie . This underlying principle in the Sidneyan strategy seems also to animate other "defensive" interventions in the history of English poetics, and the mostly unspoken or unspeakable grounds for poetry's traditionally privileged place at the centre of a liberal education. It may accordingly have implications for our ambivalence today about the "uses" of literature in a world (and an academic profession) renewing—yet again—the same pattern of impatient suspicion and adroitly evasive apologia.
Politics and Popular Piety in Fifteenth-Century Yorkshire: Images of "St" Richard Scrope in the Bolton Hours
Authors: Osborne John
Published: March 2021

The starting point for this investigation is an early fifteenth-century English book of hours, known as the "Bolton Hours," lavishly illustrated with some 47 full-page images, and now in the possession of York Minster Library (Add. MS 2). In addition to the principal written texts—notably the Hours of the Virgin and the Hours of the Cross—which were common to this genre of devotional manuscript and gave rise to its popular name, the Bolton Hours contains some unusual texts and images which have no known parallels in late medieval England. The aim of this article is to connect these unique words and pictures with contemporary political events, and in particular to the cult of "St" Richard Scrope, the Archbishop of York (1398-1405) who was convicted of treason against King Henry IV and beheaded outside the walls of his city On 8 June 1405.
Intention to Write, Intention to Teach: Vernacular Poetry and Pedagogy in Thomas Norton's Ordinal of Alchemy
Authors: Masson Cynthea
Published: March 2021

Connections made by scholars between language and alchemy generally focus on the enigmatic or obscure technical jargon used by alchemists throughout alchemy's extensive history. Only occasionally do critical studies of medieval alchemical texts examine these works for their contribution to the canon of medieval vernacular literature or literary theory. Not surprisingly, scholarly discussions of alchemical writing in Middle English literature focus primarily on Chaucer. As recently as a 1999 article in the Chaucer Review, Mark J. Bruhn in "Art, Anxiety, and Alchemy in the Canon's Yeoman's Tale" discusses alchemy as "a metaphor for Chaucer's poetry." "[W] e should have no difficulty," say_s Bruhn, in "construing the ground of the metaphor between Chaucerian letters and alchemical multiplication" (p. 309). Jane Hilberry in a 1987 article on the technical language of the Canon's Yeoman's Tale argues that alchemy's "primary attraction lies in the language that surrounds the practice." She concludes her article: "While Chaucer in the Canon's Yeoman's Tale confirms alchemy's failure to change base metals into gold, he succeeds in transmuting the language of alchemy into poetry" (p. 442). We do find, then, an effort by medievalists to explore the relationship between language and alchemy in English literature, albeit seemingly limited to an interest in Chaucer's poetry rather than in his specific use of the English language.
Of Talking Heads and Other Marvels: Hagiography and Lay Piety in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Authors: Stouck Mary-Ann
Published: March 2021

Among the unresolved issues in our understanding of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the function of the hagiographical references, comprised both of saints whom the poet mentions explicitly (Julian, Peter, Giles, John the Evangelist and/or Baptist), and of those whom he seems to have in mind but does not explicitly name. Since Ronald Tamplin's 1969 essay in Speculum substantially introduced the subject, scholars have traced numerous parallels between the stories of the saints and Gawain's adventures with a view to discovering whether the analogies function positively or ironically—that is, whether Gawain is more or less saint-like in his behaviour. Briefly, then, there is broad agreement as to the special importance of saints' references in the poem, but there remains disagreement as to their significance.
Politics and Prophecy in the Life of Umiliana dei Cerchi
Authors: Schuchman Anne M.
Published: March 2021

Prophetic power, a topos in hagiographic texts, can be strategically utilised in a variety of ways. Political prophecy, in particular, shows how certain individuals, with their manifold qualities both as saints and as ordinary human beings, touch public life. While prophetic power links the saint with the supernatural, political prophecy grounds the saint in the world both during life and after death. This paper addresses both the political and the prophetic in the oldest extant Life of the thirteenth-century Florentine mystic, Umiliana dei Cerchi, written by the Franciscan friar Vito of Cortona shortly after her death in 1246. In particular, I shall focus on the ways in which the account of her prophetic powers blurs the line between public and private, personal and political. That is, where previously Umiliana's cult has been studied for its political connections, I will concentrate here on Umiliana herself, in life and after death, as representative of political forces.
Ælfric's Use of his Sources in the Preface to Genesis, together with a Conspectus of Biblical and Patristic Sources and Analogues
Authors: Griffith Mark
Published: March 2021

The preface to Genesis by Ælfric which, in three surviving manuscripts, precedes either his translation of the first half of Genesis or the OE Hexateuch, is an independent composition in the form of a letter to "Ælfric's patron, the ealdormanta Æthelweard. The immediacy of the circumstances which gave rise to this letter, the directness of its epistolary style, and the inclusion of some autobiographical material may give the impression that it is an original piece of writing. Perhaps because of this, no systematic study of its sources has ever been made and its editors have been content to point out only the obvious quotations from the first chapter of Genesis and the allusions to other parts of the Pentateuch. However, the introduction to the symbolic interpretation of the Old Testament which forms the main body of the letter is heavily dependent on Biblical exegesis known to Ælfric. It is the purpose of this article to examine his use of scripture and patristics in this text, showing in particular how these sources cast light on the meaning of the preface.
Charlemagne in Hell
Authors: Ganz D. M.
Published: March 2021

On Sunday 11 September 813, an assembly of bishops and abbots, dukes, counts and highborn imperial officials gathered in the palace chapel at Aachen, where they saw the emperor Charlemagne crown his son Louis with a golden crown, making him co-emperor, before they all heard Mass. The once-tall emperor was bowed down, old, sick and limping from gout. Feeling himself to be declining in strength, he leaned on his son's shoulder on the way to and from the church. Louis was celebrated for his strong arms and broad shoulders, developed by practice in archery and throwing spears. Was he, perhaps, wearing his golden tunic with a golden belt and sword, in contrast to the plainer dress of his father? After father and son had prayed together for a long time (Louis was celebrated for praying on his knees with his forehead touching the ground, often in tears), Charlemagne had turned to his son, speaking in that high voice which seemed so out of character to those who looked at his tall body with its protruding stomach, large nose, and friendly face. He charged his son in the presence of all the bishops and great men chiefly to love and fear almighty God and to keep his commandments in all things, to govern the churches of God, and to defend them against wicked men. He was always to show unstinting compassion to his sisters and his younger brothers, his nephews and all of his kin. He was to honour priests as fathers, to love the people as his children, and to direct the ways of proud and wicked men in the path of salvation, to be the consoler of monks and to be a father to the poor, to establish faithful and God-fearing servants who hated unjust gifts. He was to dismiss no one from his honour without just cause and to show himself at all times without reproach before God and all the people. After Louis had promised to obey all of these injunctions he received the consent of all, and was crowned to popular acclamation—with the crown that rested on the highest altar, the altar dedicated to Christ which stood in the gallery of the palace chapel. During the coronation the people shouted Vivat imperator Ludovicus. (The ceremony was customary in Byzantium, where the emperor's eldest son had been crowned mitciugustus from 717 to 867.5) Hence forth Louis was granted the title of emperor and Augustus, and in November his father allowed him to return to Aquitaine.
Speaking the Truth: God's Law and Prophecy in Seinte Katerine
Authors: Sunderland Patricia
Published: March 2021

The early thirteenth-century Seinte Katerine, of the "Katherine Group" of anchoritic works, readily lends itself to comparison with two groups of texts. The companion saints' lives of Juliana and Margaret provide an obvious starting point: the three legends are associated in several manuscripts, they share a common genre, and they even have a number of themes and plot elements in common. Secondly, this version of the legend of Saint Katherine of Alexandria is one of many extant accounts of that saint's martyrdom, each of which varies from the others in details, but also in major elements. Jacqueline Jenkins has recently observed that "the ability to adapt, and in so doing represent or reflect contemporary social, political or religious trends, is an important feature of the St Katherine legends, and must account for a large part of the saint's enduring popularity." A number of scholars have noted that Katherine stands apart from Juliana and Margaret as much as she shares common features with them. However, the distinctive features of Scinte Kriterine, relative both to Seinte Juliene and Seinte Margarete and to other versions of the Katherine legend, warrant further attention. Foremost among these features is the thirteenth-century author's emphasis upon Katherine's learnedness in, and fidelity to, God's law. While this feature is present in the stories of Juliana and Margaret, and in various portrayals of Katherine, it achieves prominence uniquely in the Seinte Katerine legend. Two related themes in that legend appear to be inextricable from its focus on God's law: the author's emphasis on his heroine's "true belief," and her association with the great prophets of Holy Scripture. This multi-faceted focus results in a text which fashions Katherine (an alleged fourth-century Alexandrian saint who probably never existed) into an embodiment, in a single life, of the principles which were central to the lives of its anchoritic readers—even though Katherine's actions would not have served as literal models for their own.
Obscene Anglo-Norman in a Central French Mouth; or, How Renart the Fox Tricks Isengrin the Wolf, and Why It Is Important
Authors: Calin William
Published: March 2021

In Branch Ib of the late twelfth-century Roman de Renart, Renart the Fox, believed to be dead, falls into a vat of dye colouring. This enables him to return home, in disguise, claiming to be an English jongleur. Upon encountering his old enemy, Isengrin the Wolf, Renart plays his role, uttering a broken French which, presumably, the medieval audience recognised as a caricatural version of Anglo-Norman, the French spoken in England, and/or as the imperfect speech of a foreigner only superficially versed in the language.
Préhistoire de la sorcière d'après quelques récits français des XIIe et XIIIe siècles
Authors: Gingras Francis
Published: March 2021

Les médiévistes savent bien qu'avec la Dame des troubadours, librement redessinée par les premiers romanciers du Nord de la France, l'écriture médiévale a réinventé la femme en élaborant une figure de mots capable de rivaliser dans l'imaginaire érotique avec la place occupée ailleurs par Dieu lui-même. Pour autant, dans la perception commune, les pouvoirs prêtés à la femme médiévale pencheraient plutôt du côté du diable et de la magie noire, les «siècles obscurs» constituant aux yeux de plusieurs de nos contemporains, un temps béni (si l'on peut dire) pour les sorcières de tout acabit, si ce n'était qu'il fut quelque peu troublé par les flammes des bûchers. Si les historiens ont établi, depuis longtemps déjà, que la chasse aux sorcières touche bien moins le Moyen Âge que la Renaissance, la vision d'un Âge d'Or de la sorcellerie avant le XVe siècle persiste, alimentée il est vrai par l'apologie romantique de la sorcière médiévale, figure de liberté opposée au pouvoir grandissant de l'Église. Héraut de cette histoire romantique de la sorcière, Michelet a rendu célèbre l'expression d'un démonologue du XVIIe siècle qui affirmait pouvoir trouver: «pour un sorcier, dix mille sorcières» inscrivant dès lors la féminité au rang des conditions nécessaires, sinon essentielles, à la sorcellerie.
"Each...according...to his intention": Three Phases of Christine de Pizan's Literary Influence Through the Ages
Authors: Margolis Nadia
Published: March 2021

Many scholars participating in the current boom in Christine de Pizan studies tend to think of the "discovery of Christine" as a phenomenon limited to the past thirty—or even ten—years. In truth, however, Christine has been alive in the Western literary imagination—if not flamboyantly so—since the fifteenth century. Alongside her predictable presence among resurgent feminists, her courageously political-moral persona, whether in verse or in prose, has found welcome within the least likely writings, "embroidered" or "mortared" into the totality of the particular author's message, as one of the author's "strands" or "bricks," chascune at elle doit servir, selon la fin de l'intention oú it tent "each one where it should best serve, according to the needs of his intention," to use Christine's own metaphors for (especially didactic) literary composition.' The reasons for Christine's enduring attraction are twofold: her heroic conversion from helpless victim to active participant in the major events of her era, and her talent for literary self-fashioning while evoking this real-life transformation. Both traits would be replicated among even the most improbable of her modern borrowers.
Four Electras
Authors: Podlecki Anthony J.
Published: March 2021

A comparative analysis of the three Athenian tragedians' versions of the Orestes-legend can hardly claim the virtue of novelty, but to look at them again from a restricted point of view, concentrating on the character of Electra, and especially to include in the examination an unjustly neglected masterpiece of the modern French theatre, Jean Giraudoux's Electre 2 of 1937, will perhaps yield further fruits in this well-trodden field. The four Electras are compared under the following headings: prominence, structure, contribution to the decisive action, relationship to other characters and motivation.
Tyranny, Anarkhia, and the Problems of the Boule in the Oresteia
Authors: Beer D.G.
Published: March 2021

In 462/1 B.C. the Council on the Areopagus, we are informed, was stripped of most of its political power and left primarily as a homicide court. Later in the same year Athens revoked her alliance with Sparta and formed a new alliance with Argos, Sparta's main rival in the Peloponnese. The initiative for both of these moves came from the democratic faction under the leadership of Ephialtes and Pericles. Although many of the details surrounding these events still remain unclear, there is no doubt that "party" feelings ran high. Cimon, the conservative statesman, who had supported Athens' alliance with Sparta and had upheld the authority of the Areopagus, was ostracized, and Ephialtes was assassinated. It was, to use the words of Sir Richard Livingstone, "the greatest domestic struggle that Athens was to know for sixty years.
Classical and Secular Learning among the Irish before the Carolingian Renaissance
Authors: Herren Michael
Published: March 2021

Any paper on the old topic of Irish learning in the Dark Ages, a question to which so many erudite books and articles have been devoted, requires some kind of explanation from the writer, especially when he does not intend to present very much in the way of new evidence. To put matters succinctly, the reason for this foray into familiar territory is a methodological one. The question of the state of learning in early mediaeval Ireland has long been vexed by confusions. The most serious of these has been a certain fuzziness regarding "classical learning," which semper et ubique refers to the direct study of the best literary products of the Greek and Roman civilizations up to about the second century A.D., and "secular learning," which is based upon "classical learning" and is intimately bound up, but not identical, with it. Secular learning embraces a host of non-theological subjects and is more or less identical with the liberal arts in the form in which they were transmitted by handbooks to the early Middle Ages. Secular learning includes, in addition to the canonical seven or nine liberal arts, the numerous topics that make up "natural science" (including geography, ethnography, even some areas of history, i.e., the social sciences of today). Classical and secular learning maintained their close association with each other until the end of antiquity, when they gradually became divorced. Bede could write his De Schematibus et Tropis without reference to classical literature, and as we shall argue, the Irish studied Vergilian commentaries without knowing much, if anything, about Vergil.