Medium Aevum articles from March 22 1996

Medium Aevum archives from March 22 1996

The mother's lament: 'Wulf and Eadwacer' reconsidered. (Exeter Book poem)
March 22, 1996... Leodum is minum swylce him mon lac gife; willao hy hine apecgan, gif he on preat cymed. Ungelic is us. Wulf is on iege, ic on operre. 5 Faest is paet eglond, fenne biworpen. Sindon welreowe weras paer on ige;...

The Middle English 'Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle.'
March 22, 1996... Because this article introduces an unpublished and little-known Middle English text, it engages necessarily in a diverse set of enquiries. As a consequence, the article is divided into sections which consider (I) the manuscript, (II) a history of...

Reconstructing Robert Thornton's herbal. (15th-century manuscript fragments)
March 22, 1996... At the end of Lincoln Cathedral, Dean and Chapter Library, MS 91, one of the two Thornton MSS, are seven fragments -- fols 315-21 -- apparently the inner edges of leaves that were torn away during an unhappy moment in the history of the codex....

The Middle English culinary recipes in MS Harley 5401: an edition and commentary.
March 22, 1996... The culinary manuscripts of the Middle Ages are increasingly a concern of those interested in social history -- among others;(1) yet a significant impediment to research on Middle English culinary matters remains in the remarkable fact that there...

Scribal whim and miniature allocation in the illustrated manuscripts of the 'Continuation-Gauvain.'
March 22, 1996... Otto Pacht and Stephen Nichols have noted the apparent arbitrariness of the process whereby any given work is selected for illustration, or an episode within that work preferred to another.(1) Nichols further points out that different manuscripts...

Serlo of Wilton: biographical notes. (c. 1105-1181)
March 22, 1996... The nearest thing we have to a biography of the Latin poet Serlo of Wilton is the brief introduction by Jan Oberg to his edition of Serlo's poems,(1) together with a short article on the `early years' by A. C. Friend.(2) Serlo had not even been...

The mirthless content of Skarphedinn's grin. (in Old Icelandic 'Njals saga')
March 22, 1996... Facial expression is curiously absent in the sagas. Saga characters are dry and sparing of speech, and we imagine them as stony-faced, tight-lipped people. In times of stress, tears like hailstones might start from Porhallr Asgrimsson's face, or...

Textual Decorum: A Rhetoric of Attitudes in Medieval Literature.
March 22, 1996... Scott D. Troyan, Garland Studies in Medieval Literature 12 (New York and London: Garland, 1994). vii + 288 pp. ISBN 0-8153-1555-4. $45.00. Provoked by the allegation that medieval scholarship is perceived as `site of pedantry and...

The Poetics of Personification.
March 22, 1996... James J. Paxson, Literature, Culture, Theory 6 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). xii + 210 pp. ISBN 0-521-44539-6 30.00[pounds]. This volume surveys the trope of personification as it is discussed in rhetorical tradition from...

Geschichte der abendlandischen Mystik, I: Die Grundlegung durch die Kirchenvater und die Monchstheologie des 12. Jahrhunderts.
March 22, 1996... Kurt Ruh, (Munich: Beck, 1990). 414 pp.; 12 illustrations. ISBN 3-406-34471-2. DM 78. This is the first part of a projected four-volume history of Western mysticism which, notwithstanding the impression given by the title, will end with the...

Christliche Mystik im Abendland: Ihre Geschichte von den Anfangen bis zum Ende des Mittelalters.
March 22, 1996... Peter Dinzelbacher, (Paderborn [etc.]: Ferdinand Schoningh, 1994). 463 pp. ISBN 3-506-72016-3. DM 78. The first volumes of two important surveys of Western mysticism have appeared in recent times, one in German by Kurt Ruh, and the other by...

The Tempter's Voice: Language and the Fall in Medieval Literature.
March 22, 1996... Eric Jager, (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993). xx + 336 pp.; 7 illustrations. ISBN 0-8014-2753-3. 35.15[pounds]. This book benefits from wide-ranging structuralist, poststructuralist, and feminist interest in Augustinian...

Heresy and Literacy: 1000-1530.
March 22, 1996... ed. Peter Biller and Anne Hudson, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 23 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). xxv + 313 pp.; 10 plates. ISBN 0-521-41979-4. 37.50[pounds]. This distinguished collaboration is the first to bring...

Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism.
March 22, 1996... Elizabeth Avilda Petroff, (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). xii + 235 pp. ISBN 0-19-508454-3, 25.00[pounds] (hard covers); ISBN C-19-508455-1, 10.95[pounds] (p/b). Elizabeth Avilda Petroff admirably fulfils the apparently...

The Arts of Friendship: The Idealization of Friendship in Medieval and Early Renaissance Literature.
March 22, 1996... Reginald Hyatte, (Leiden, New York and Cologne: Brill, 1994). 249 pp. ISBN 90-04-10018-0. 56.00[pounds]. Friendship was analysed by Greek philosophers, who then influenced Cicero and Seneca. These Latin authors were well known in the early...

Hugh Primas and the Archpoet.
March 22, 1996... Fleur Adcock, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). xxii + 129 pp. ISBN 0-521-39546-1, 25.00 [pounds]. In turning her hand to the translation of all the known poems of the two most famous Goliardic poets of the twelfth century, those...

Andreas and the Ambiguity of Courtly Love.
March 22, 1996... Paolo Cherchi, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994). xv + 194 pp. ISBN 0-8020-0577-2. 32.00 [pounds]. The title of this volume is a shade misleading, as the real focus of the study is on the understanding of troubadour poetry in its...

Reading Dido: Gender, Textuality and the Medieval 'Aeneid.'
March 22, 1996... Marilynn Desmond, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994). xv + 296 pp.; 25 figures. ISBN 0-1866-2246-9, $44.95 (hard covers); ISBN 0-8166-2247-7, $17.95 (p/b). Marilynn Desmond's reading of the medieval Dido is a troubling one, and...

Death and the Prince: Memorial Preaching before 1350.
March 22, 1996... D. L. d'Avray, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). xi + 315 pp. ISBN 0-19-820396-9. 40.00. [pounds] The year 1994 saw two substantial publications in the field of medieval sermon studies. David L. d'Avray's aromatically titled Death and the...

Macaronic Sermons: Bilingualism and Preaching in Late-Medieval England.
March 22, 1996... Siegfried Wenzel, Macaronic Sermons: Bilingualism and Preaching in Late-Medieval England (Ann Arbor: Michigan State University Press, 1994). xiii + 361 pp. ISBN 0-472-10521-3. 39.60 [pounds]. The year 1994 saw two substantial publications in...

Bartholomaeus Anglicus and his Encyclopedia.
March 22, 1996... M. C. Seymour et al., (Aldershot and Brookfield: Variorum, 199Z). vii + 163 pp. ISBN 0-86078-326-x. 45.00. [pounds] Following on from the critical edition of John Trevisa's English translation of the De proprietatibus rerum by the friar minor...

The Book of Kells: Proceedings of a Conference at Trinity College Dublin, 6-9 September 1992.
March 22, 1996... ed. Felicity O'Mahony (Aldershot: Scolar Press; Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate, 1994). xiv + 488 pp.; 191 plates. ISBN 0-85967-967-5. 75.00 [pounds]. These two books are concerned in very different ways with Hiberno-Saxon art. The papers from...

The Earliest Irish and English Bookarts: Visual and Poetic Forms before A.D. 1000.
March 22, 1996... Robert D. Stevick, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994). xiv + 282 pp.; 116 plates. ISBN 0-8122-3220-8. 75.00 [pounds]. These two books are concerned in very different ways with Hiberno-Saxon art. The papers from the Dublin...

An Invitation to Old English and Anglo-Saxon England.
March 22, 1996... Bruce Mitchell, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994). xix + 424 pp. ISBN 0-631-1743 5-4, 45.00 [pounds] (hard covers); ISBN 0-631-17436-2, 12.99 [pounds] (p/b). In his latest major work, Bruce Mitchell gives expression to one of his most important...

The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry: An Edition of Exeter Dean and Chapter MS 3501.
March 22, 1996... ed. Bernard J. Muir (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1994). 817 pp. ISBN 0-8598-436-3. 45.00 [pounds]. Nearly sixty years have passed since Krapp and Dobbie's edition of the Exeter Book for Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records; a new complete edition...

Managing Language in 'Piers Plowman.'
March 22, 1996... Gillian Rudd, Piers Plowman Studies 9 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994). xiv + 246 pp. ISBN 0-85991-392-9. 35.00 [pounds] This book explores how language in Piers Plowman relates to the quest for knowledge. Gillian Rudd argues that the kind of...

Signes and Sothe: Language in the Piers Plowman Tradition.
March 22, 1996... Helen Barr, Piers Plowman Studies 10 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994). xiv + 188 pp. ISBN 0-85991-419-4. 35.00 [pounds]; $61.00. Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, Richard the Redeless, Mum and the Sothsegger and The Crowned King are all indebted to...

'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' and French Arthurian Romance.
March 22, 1996... Ad Putter, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). xii + 279 pp. ISBN 0-19-818253-8. 30.00[pounds] Both these authors take as their subject the intertextualities of Arthurian romance: Ad Putter to demonstrate how extensively the Gawain poet carries...

The Fall of Kings and Prince: Structure and Destruction in Arthurian Tragedy.
March 22, 1996... M. Victoria Guerin, (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1995; distributed outside North America by Cambridge University Press). xiii + 336 pp. ISBN 0-8047-2290-0. 27.95 [pounds]. Both these authors take as their subject the...

Chaucer's Ovidian Arts of Love.
March 22, 1996... Robert Myles, Chaucer Studies 20 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994). 153 pp. ISBN 0-85991-409-7. 29.50 [pounds]. As love-poet, antifeminist, mythographer and moral exemplar, Ovid enabled Chaucer to engage in a process of self-definition. In...

Chaucerian Realism.
March 22, 1996... Michael A. Calabrese, (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994). x + 170 pp. ISBN 0-8130-1301-1. 27.00 [pounds]. As love-poet, antifeminist, mythographer and moral exemplar, Ovid enabled Chaucer to engage in a process of self-definition....

Studies in 'Troilus': Chaucer's Text, Meter and Diction.
March 22, 1996... Stephen A. Barney, (East Lansing, Michigan: Colleagues Press, 1993). viii + 167 pp. ISBN 0-937191-45-0. 22.50 [pounds]. Stephen A. Barney's `litel boke' would be easier to review if its author were a film-maker instead of a scholar. Then at...

Nicholas Love's 'Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ': A Critical Edition Based on Cambridge University Library Additional MSS 6578 and 6686.
March 22, 1996... Michael G. Sargent, Garland Medieval Texts 18 (New York and London: Garland, 199Z). cliii + 342 pp.; 10 plates. ISBN 0-8240-5896-8. $80.00. Michael Sargent's edition of Nicholas Love's Mirror answers a long-felt need for a standard modern...

Margery Kempe's Dissenting Fictions.
March 22, 1996... Lynn Staley, (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994). xiii + 224 pp. ISBN 0-271-01030-4, 31.50 [pounds] (hard covers); ISBN 0-271-01031-2, 15.50 [pounds] (p/b). In this forthright study of The Book of Margery Kempe, Lynn...

Seeable Signs: The Iconography of the Seven Sacraments, 1350-1544.
March 22, 1996... Ann Eljenholm Nichols, 1350-1544 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1994). xvii + 412 pp.; 5 figures; 97 plates. ISBN 0-85115-342-9. 49.50[pounds] This study is an important contribution to our understanding of the popular practice of religion in late...

Charlemagne in the North: Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference of the Societe Rencesvals, Edinburgh 4th to 11th August 1991.
March 22, 1996... ed. Philip E. Bennett, Anne Elizabeth Cobby and Graham A. Runnalls (Edinburgh: Societe Rencesvals British Branch, 1993). iii + 545 pp. ISBN 0-9519791-1-6. 45.00[pounds] The Proceedings of the Twelfth Societe Rencesvals Conference are divided...

La Vie de St Alexis: Texte du manuscrit A (B.N. nouv. acq. fr. 4503).
March 22, 1996... ed. T. D. Hemming (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1994). xxxix + 51 pp.; 1 plate. ISBN 0-85989-462-2. 9.95 [pounds]. T. D. Hemming provides us with the first edition of MS A of the Saint Alexis. This of itself makes the publication a...

The Faces of Time: Portrayal of the Past in Old French and Latin Historical Narrative of the Anglo-Norman Regnum.
March 22, 1996... Jean Blacker, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994). xvi + 263 pp. ISBN 0-292-70808-4. $40.00. The importance of the Anglo-Norman historical literature of the twelfth century has been highlighted recently by a number of scholars, perhaps...

La Couleur de la melancolie: La frequentation des livres au XIVe siecle, 1300-1415.
March 22, 1996... Jacqueline cerquiglini-Toulet, Litterature: Breves (Paris: Hatier, 1993). 187 pp. + 16 pp. of colour plates. ISBN 2-218-05175-3. F. Fr. 140.28. The fourteenth century is the poor relation of French medieval studies, usually thought to be...

Guillaume de Machaut: 'The Fountain of Love' ('La fonteinne amoureuse') and Two Other Love Vision Poems.
March 22, 1996... ed. and trans. R. Barton Palmer, Garland Library of Medieval Literature A 54 (New York and London: Garland, 1993). xcvi + 251 pp. ISBN 0-8240-8781-x. $52.00. The two other love-vision poems are Machaut's Prologue to his complete works and his...

Guillaume de Machaut: 'La Fontaine amoureuse.'
March 22, 1996... Ed. and trans. Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet (Mesnil-sur-l'Estree: Stock, 1993). 211 pp. ISBN 2-234-02549-4. F. Fr. 98.00. By a curious coincidence, but one which shows how far Machaut's literary stock has risen in recent years, this accurate...

Jean Froissart: 'La Prison amoureuse' ('The Prison of Love').
March 22, 1996... Ed. and trans. Laurence de Looze, Garland Library of Medieval Literature A 96 (New York and London: Garland, 1994). xxxii + 261 pp. ISBN 0-8153-0329-7. $44.00. This new edition and translation of l a Prison amoureuse is clearly aimed at the...

Les Proprietes des choses selon le Rosarius (B.N. f. fr. 12483).
March 22, 1996... Anders Zetterberg, edition revue et completee par Sven Sandqvist, Etudes romanes de Lund 52 (Lund: Lund University Press, 1994). 224 pp. No price given. At the time of his death in 1992, Anders Zetterberg had completed a draft of the text of...

Dante Alighieri: 'Vita nuova.'
March 22, 1996... Ed. Jennifer Petrie and June Salmons, Belfield Italian Library (Dublin: Foundation for Italian Studies, University College Dublin, 1994). 152 pp.; 1 illustration. ISBN 1-898473-01-3. 7.95[pounds]. The Vita nuova is Dante's selective review of...

Dante Alighieri: 'Hell.'
March 22, 1996... Trans. with introduction and notes by Steve Ellis (London: Chatto & Windus, 1994). xxii + 208 pp. ISBN 0-7011-6127-2. 15.99[pounds]. Steve Ellis's new version of Dante's Inferno is a bold departure from the many other English translations...

Dante's Christian Astrology.
March 22, 1996... Richard Kay, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994). xii + 395 pp. ISBN 0-8122-3233-X. $46.95. Something is stirring in Dante scholarship. During the last few years several studies have begun to question the dominant view of the...

Commentary and Ideology: Dante in the Renaissance.
March 22, 1996... Deborah Parker, (Durham, North Carolina, and London: Duke University Press, 1993). xii + 252 pp. ISBN 0-8223-1281-6. 31.50[pounds]. This book aims at an analysis of the reception of the Divina Commedia through the study of its Quattrocento and...

Dante and the Mystical Tradition: Bernard of Clairvaux in the 'Commedia.'
March 22, 1996... Steven Botterill, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 42 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). x + 269 pp. ISBN 0-521-43454-8. 37.50[pounds]. `Our century knows too much about the Commedia for its own good: many of those who...

The Worlds of Petrarch.
March 22, 1996... Giuseppe Mazzotta, Duke Monographs in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 14 (Durham, North Carolina, and London: Duke University Press, 1994). XV + 231 pp. ISBN 0-8223-1363-4. 32.95[pounds]. It is not often that one reads a study on a major...

Merchant Culture in Fourteenth-Century Venice: The 'Zibaldone da Canal.'
March 22, 1996... Trans. John E. Dotson, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 98 (Binghamton, NY: MRTS, 1994). xii + 228 pp. ISBN 0-86698-112-8. $25.00. This useful and fascinating volume translates Alfredo Stussi's edition of the Zibaldone da Canal,...

Pero Lopez de Ayala: 'Cronica del Rey don Pedro y Rey don Enrique, su hermano, hijos del rey don Alfonso Onceno,' vol. 1.
March 22, 1996... I: edicion critica y notes de German Orduna; estudio preliminar de German Orduna y Jose Luis Moure (Buenos Aires: SECRIT e INCIPIT, 1994). clxviii + 329 pp.; 5 plates. ISBN 987-99735-0-x. No price given. Lopez de Ayala's historiographical work,...

Deutsche Literatur und Sprache von 1050-1200: Festschrift fur Ursula Hennig.
March 22, 1996... ed. Annegret Fiebig and Hans-Jochen Schiewer (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1995). ISBN 3-05-002561-1. viii + 376 pp. DM 196. The twenty articles in this collection of essays on early Middle High German make clear how interest in the period has been...

Chivalry in Twelfth-Century Germany: The Works of Hartmann von Aue.
March 22, 1996... W. H. Jackson, The Works of Hartmann von Aue, Arthurian Studies 34 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994). xiv + 320 pp. ISBN 0-85991-431-3 39.50[pounds] W. H. Jackson's book is the first in English to cover the whole production of Hartmann von Aue...

Wolfger von Erla, Bischof von Passau, 1191-1204, und Patriarch von Aquileja, 1204-1218, als Kirchenfurst und Literaturmazen.
March 22, 1996... ed. Egon Boshof and Fritz Peter Knapp, Germanische Bibliothek, Untersuchungen 20 (Heidelberg: Winter, 1994). 364 pp. DM 128. The historical conditions of literary patronage in Germany around 1200 have received growing attention of late. Quite...

Der deutsche 'Lucidarius', I: Kritischer Text nach den Handschriften.
March 22, 1996... ed. Dagmar Gottschall and Georg Steer, Texte und Textgeschichte 35 (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1994). x + 135* + 343 pp. ISBN 3-484-36035-6. DM 228. The `A' prologue to the Lucidarius describes how the work was commissioned by Duke Henry from the...

Untersuchungen zur Funktion der politischen Spruchdichtung Walthers von der Vogelweide.
March 22, 1996... Goppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 592 (Goppingen: Kummerle, 1993). 293 pp. ISBN 3-87452-834-0. DM 62. A review of our assumptions about the function of Walther's political poems, in the light of recent historical research, is long overdue, a...

Wolfram von Eschenbach: 'Parzival,' 2 vols.
March 22, 1996... nach der Ausgabe Karl Lachmanns revidiert und kommentiert von Eberhard Nellmann, ubertragen von Dieter Kuhn, 2 vols, Bibliothek de Mittelalters 8/1-2 (Frankfurt-am-Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1994). ISBN 3-618-66083-9, DM 280 (linen); ISBN...

Kaiser, Kaufmann und die Macht des Geldes: Gerhard Unmaze von Koln als Finanzier der Reichspolitik und der 'Gute Gerhard' des Rudolf von Ems.
March 22, 1996... Sonja Zoller, Forschungen zur Geschichte der alteren deutschen Literatur 16 (Munich: Fink, 1993). 396 pp. ISBN 3-7705-2850-6. DM 78. Sonja Zoller's book offers a detailed investigation of a set of possible circumstances surrounding the...

Mechthild von Magdeburg: 'Das fliessende Licht der Gottheit'. Nach der Einsiedler Handschrift in kritischem Vergleich mit der gesamten Uberlieferung, 2 vols.
March 22, 1996... ed. Hans Neumann, prepared for the press by Gisela Vollmann-Profe, 2 vols, Munchener Texte und Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters 100-i (Munich: Artemis, 1990-3). Vol. I: xxviii + 314 pp.; I plate; ISBN 3-7608-3400-0. DM 89....

Das 'St. Katharinentaler Schwesternbuch': Untersuchung, Edition Kommentar.
March 22, 1996... Ruth Meyer, Munchener Texte und Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters 104 (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1995) xi + 383 pp. ISBN 3-484-89104-1 DM 98. Ever since its initial (and incomplete) publication in 1887, the chronicle of...

Nurnberger Prosa-Asop.
March 22, 1996... ed. Klaus Grubmuller, Altdeutsche Textbibliothek 107 (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1994). xxxii + 101 pp. ISBN 3-484-20207-6. DM 44. Nurnberger Prosa-Asop, which here receives a welcome hrst edition, is a collection of sixty-three fables in German...

The Waltham Chronicle: An Account of the Discovery of our Holy Cross at Montacute and its Conveyance to Waltham.
March 22, 1996... ed. and trans. Leslie Watkiss and Marjorie Chibnall, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). liii + 99 pp.; 2 plates. ISBN 0-19-822164-9. 27.50[pounds]. When in the bme of Cnut a life-size crucifix was miraculously discovered in...

The Rise of European Music: 1380-1500.
March 22, 1996... Reinhard Strohm, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). xv + 720 pp ISBN 0-521-41745-7. 60.00[pounds]. This is a formidable book, a reflection of its author's colossal expertise in fifteenth-century music, and a challenge to the...

Chretien de Troyes: Perceval (Le Conte du Graal).
March 22, 1996... Keith Busby, Critical Guides to French Texts 98 (London: Grant & Cutler, 1993). 98 pp. ISBN 0-7293-0357-8. 4.95[pounds]. The aim of this volume is to provide the student with a guiding thread through the important questions raised by this...

Cyclification: The Development of Narrative Cycles in the Chansons de Geste and the Arthurian Romances.
March 22, 1996... ed. Bart Besamusca, Willem P. Gerritsen, Corry Hogetoorn and Orlanda S. H. Lie (Amsterdam [etc.]: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen Verhandelingen, 1994). vii + 235 pp. ISBN 0-444-85781-8. D. H. 78. This interesting volume, the...

Il libro di messer Tristano ('Tristano Veneto').
March 22, 1996... ed. Aulo Donadello (Venice: Marsilio, 1994). 648 pp. ISBN 88-317-5853-5. L. 88,000. This Italian version of the Tristan story is here published for the first time. It is considerably longer than the better-known Tristano Riccardiano (first edited...

The Black Death.
March 22, 1996... ed. and trans. Rosemary Horrox, Manchester Medieval Sources (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994). xiv + 364 pp. ISBN 0-7190-3497-3, 40.00[pounds] (hard covers); ISBN 0-7190-3498-1, 14.99[pounds] (p/b). This pains-taking work of...