Medium Aevum articles from September 22 1997

Medium Aevum archives from September 22 1997

Chaucer and the Universe of Learning.
September 22, 1997... Ann W. Astell, (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1996). xvi + 254 pp. ISBN 0-8014-3269-3. 27-50 [pounds sterling]. Ann Astell makes three arguments in this book on the basis that Chaucer is a philosophical poet. She makes a solid...

'Estoire' as word and genre: meaning and literary usage in the twelfth century.
September 22, 1997... The so-called `lexical fluidity' of medieval semantics (much of it no more than a combination of missing or fragmentary manuscript record and the failings of modern scholarship)(1) must surely be one of the most misused of all scholarly concepts....

'Li anemis meismes': Satan and synagogue in 'La Queste del Saint Graal.'
September 22, 1997... The identification of the Jewish people with 'serpens antiquus qui vocatur Diabolus et Satans'(1) is a cherished theme of medieval polemicists, and a close examination of the Queste del Saint Graal (c. 1220) reveals evidence of such an...

The compilation of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 86.
September 22, 1997... Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 86 is one of the most famous manuscripts of the period of `early Middle English', and it is undoubtedly one of the most important. Traditionally thought to have been compiled sometime between 1271 and 1283,(1)...

The composition and social context of Oxford, Jesus College, MS 29(II) and London, British Library, MS Cotton Caligula A.ix.
September 22, 1997... Oxford, Jesus College, NIS 29(II) (J) and London, British Library, MS Cotton Caligula A.ix (C) are two closely related manuscripts dating from the second half of the thirteenth century, each of which contains a number of poetic works in both...

Pre-texts: tables of contents and the reading of John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis.'
September 22, 1997... The forty-nine surviving English manuscripts(1) of John Gower's Confessio Amantis are noteworthy for their remarkably high quality and consistency, features which have shaped much of the investigation of the manuscripts since. In his 1900...

Fate, faith and paradox: medieval unlucky days as a context for 'Wytte Hath Wondyr.'
September 22, 1997... One of the more difficult issues to document in the popular devout literature of late medieval Britain is the easy and accepted contradiction between what experience and reason seemed to demand, and what religious faith revealed. Since the Fourth...

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, vol 10, The Abingdon Chronicle.
September 22, 1997... ed. David Dumville. 1995. 23 pp. + facsimile. ISBN 0-85991-125-x. 75.00[pounds sterling]. After a long gestation, the Collaborative Edition of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was first advertised in a prospectus issued in 1981. Originally no fewer...

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, vol. 6, MS D.
September 22, 1997... ed. G. P. Cubbin. 1996. clxi + 123 pp. ISBN 0-85991-467-4. 35.00 [pounds sterling]. After a long gestation, the Collaborative Edition of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was first advertised in a prospectus issued in 1981. Originally no fewer than...

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, vol. 1, MS F: A Facsimile Edition.
September 22, 1997... ed. Patrick W. Conner. 1996. xc + 46 pp. ISBN 0-85991-466-6. 35.00 [pounds sterling]. After a long gestation, the Collaborative Edition of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was first advertised in a prospectus issued in 1981. Originally no fewer than...

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
September 22, 1997... trans. and ed. M. J. Swanton (London: Dent, 1996). xxxvi + 363 pp. ISBN 0-460-87737-2. 20.00 [pounds sterling]. After a long gestation, the Collaborative Edition of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was first advertised in a prospectus issued in 1981....

Medievalism and the Modernist Temper.
September 22, 1997... Ed. R. Howard Bloch and Stephen G. Nichols (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). vii + 496 pp. ISBN 0-8018-5086-x. 49.50 [pounds sterling]. These essays look at representations of the Middle Ages from the sixteenth to...

Medieval Venuses and Cupids: Sexuality, Hermeneutics, and English Poetry.
September 22, 1997... Theresa Tinkle, (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996; distributed in the UK by Cambridge University Press). 294 pp. ISBN 0-8047-2525-2. 35.00 [pounds sterling]. This book ranges over some leading mythographers from the fifth...

The Boundaries of Faith: The Development and Transmission of Medieval Spirituality.
September 22, 1997... John C. Hirsh, Studies in the History of Christian Thought 67 (Leiden, New York and Cologne: Brill, 1996). xii + 189 pp. ISBN 90-04-10428-3. D.fl. 150. In this book John C. Hirsh makes a brave attempt to demonstrate that spirituality (or...

Mary Through the Centuries: Her Place in the History of Culture.
September 22, 1997... Jaroslav Pelikan, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996). x + z69 pp.; 20 black-and-white and 18 colour plates. ISBN 0-300-06951-0. $25.00. It is now more than ten years since Jaroslav Pelikan's Jesus through the Centuries showed...

The Power of Women: A 'Topos' in Medieval Art and Literature.
September 22, 1997... Susan L. Smith, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995). XV + 294 pp.; 48 plates. ISBN 0-8122-279-8. 42.50 [pounds sterling]. This study grew out of a 1978 doctoral thesis, and happily supplements depth of research with an...

New Science Out of Old Books: Studies in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books in Honour of A.I. Doyle.
September 22, 1997... ed. Richard Beadle and A. J. Piper (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995). xi + 455 pp.; 69 plates. ISBN 1-85928-003-x. 65.00 [pounds sterling]. That this should be the second festschrift in honour of Ian Doyle is an indication of the esteem and...

Mitteleuropaische Schulen, I: ca. 1250-1350.
September 22, 1997... Andreas Fingernagel and Martin Roland, Mitteleuropaische Schulen, I: ca. 1250-1350, Die illuluminierten Handschriften und Inkunabeln der Osterreichischen Nationalbibliothek, set. 1, 10 (= Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist....

Late Merovingian France: History and Hagiography, 640-720.
September 22, 1997... Paul Fouracre and Richard A. Gerberding, Manchester Medieval Sources (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1996). xi + 397 PP. ISBN 0-7190-4790-0. 4790-0 45.00 [pounds sterling] (hard covers); ISBN 0-7190-4791-9, 17-99 [pounds...

A Thesaurus of Old English, 2 vols.
September 22, 1997... Jane Roberts and Christian Kay, with Lynne Grundy, King's College London Medieval Studies II (London: King's College London Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, 1995). z vols. xxxv + 1555 pp. ISBN 00-9522119-0-4. 55.00 [pounds sterling]....

Old English Poetic Metre.
September 22, 1997... B.R. Hutcheson,(Cambridge: D.S. Brewer; Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer, 1995). xvi + 351 pp. ISBN 0-85991-435-6. 49.50 [pounds sterling]. B.R. Hutcheson has scanned 13,044 lines of Old English verse using a computerized database and his own...

Interactions of Thought and Language in Old English Poetry.
September 22, 1997... Peter Clemoes, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 12 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). xvii + 523 pp. ISBN 0-521-3071 1-2. 45-00 [pounds sterling]. The year 1995 was an exceptional one for Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon...

The Textuality of Old English Poetry.
September 22, 1997... Carol Braun Pasternack, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 13 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). xii + 219 pp. ISBN 0-521-46149-4. 35.00 [pounds sterling]. The year 1995 was an exceptional one for Cambridge Studies in...

Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the 'Beowulf'-Manuscript.
September 22, 1997... Andy Orchard, (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer; Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer, 1995). viii + 352 pp. ISBN 0-85991-456-9. 39.50 [pounds sterling]. Long ago, in 1936, J. R. R. Tolkien taught readers of Beowulf that the monsters in the poem were its...

'Beowulf' and the Demise of Germanic Legend in England.
September 22, 1997... Craig R. Davis, Albert Bates Lord Studies in Oral Tradition 17 (New York and London: Garland, 1996). xvii + 237 PP. ISBN 0-8153-2354-9. $36.00. Craig R. Davis's perspective in writing on Beowulf and the demise of Germanic legend in England is...

Le Conventum (vers 1030): Un precurseur aquitain des premieres epopees.
September 22, 1997... George Beech, Yves Chauvin and Georges Pon, Publications romanes et francaises 212 (Geneva: Droz, 1995). 190 pp.; 1 plate. ISBN 2-600-00056-9. 28.00 [pounds sterling]. The Conventum of the tide is a Latin text Of 342 lines written in Aquitaine...

Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon: 'Hisotria Anglorum' ('History of the English People').
September 22, 1997... ed. and trans. Diana Greenway, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). clxxii + 899 pp.; 4 plates. ISBN 0-19-822224-6. 95.00 [pounds sterling]. Scholars have waited for over a century for a full and critical edition of Henry of...

Fortuna, Money and the Sublunar World: Twelfth-Century Ethical Poetics and the Satirical Poetry of the 'Carmina Burana.'
September 22, 1997... Thomas M. S. Lehtonen, (Saarijavi: Publisher, 1995). 188 pp. ISBN 9-51710-027-2. F. Mk. 120. This book sets out to place some of the satirical poems of the Carmina Burana (CB) in a firm sociocultural context. The introduction (pp. 9-36)...

Roger Bacon and the Origins of Perspectiva in the Middle Ages: A Critical Edition and English Translation of Bacon's 'Perspectiva' with Introduction and Notes.
September 22, 1997... David C. Lindberg, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). cxi + 411 pp.; 64 figures. ISBN 0-19-823992-0. 60.00 [pounds sterling]. One can do little more thin stand in respectful awe of David C. Lindberg's achievement in making intelligible to modem...

The Loving Subject: Desire, Eloquence and Power in Romanesque France.
September 22, 1997... Gerald A. Bond, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995). 276 pp. ISBN 0-8122-3322-0. 36.95 [pounds sterling]. Gerald A. Bond's latest book is another addition to the Middle Ages series produced by the University of Pennsylvania...

From Phoenix to Chauntecleer: Medieval English Animal Poetry.
September 22, 1997... Thomas Honegger, Swiss Studies in English 120 (Tubingen and Basle: Francke, 1996). xii + 288 pp. ISBN 3-7720-2432-7. DM 86. Although this book advertises itself as a `study of the use and function of animals in medieval English vernacular...

The Knight on His Quest: Symbolic Patterns of Transition in 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.'
September 22, 1997... Piotr Sadowski, (Newark: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1996). 289 pp. ISBN 0-087413-580-X. 29.50 [pounds sterling]. This book on the symbolic meanings of Gawain is an offshoot of two critical traditions:...

Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France.
September 22, 1997... Joyce Coleman, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 26 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). xiv + 250 pp.; 10 plates. ISBN 0-521-55391-1. 37.50 [pounds sterling]. This is a book with a clear thesis: `public reading was a common...

Chaucer, Boccaccio, and the Debate of Love: A Comparative Study of the 'Decameron' and the 'Canterbury Tales.'
September 22, 1997... N. S. Thompson, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). x + 354 PP. ISBN 0-19-812378-7. 40.00 [pounds sterling]. `Did Chaucer know the Decameron?' With that century-old question Nigel S. Thompson opens the introduction to a book-length attempt to...

Geoffrey Chaucer: The Wife of Bath's Prologue. (CD-ROM)(Evaluation)
September 22, 1997... ed. Peter Robinson, with contributions from Norman Blake, Daniel W. Mosser, Stephen Partridge and Elizabeth Solopova (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). CD-ROM (PC/Mac) with handbook. 80 pp. 150.00 [pounds sterling]. The first...

English Wycliffite Sermons, vol. 4.
September 22, 1997... Ed. Pamela Gradon and Anne Hudson, vol. IV (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). xv + 333 PP.; 5 plates. ISBN 0-19-812775-8. 60.00 [pounds sterling] Vol. V (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). xiii + 443 pp.; 1 plate. ISBN 0-19-813005-8. 70.00 [pounds...

William Dunbar: Selected Poems.
September 22, 1997... ed. Priscilla Bawcutt, Longman Annotated Texts (Harlow: Addison Wesley Longman; New York. Longman, 1996). xii + 45 1 pp. ISBN 0-582-06188-1, 50.00 [pounds sterling] (hard covers); ISBN 0-582-06187-3, 19.99 [pounds sterling] (p/b). This is the...

La Legende de Troie en France au moyen age: Analyse des versions francaises et bibliographie raisonnee des manuscrits.
September 22, 1997... Marc-Rene Jung, Romanica Helvetica 114 (Basle and Tubingen: Francke, 1996). 662 pp.; 28 plates. ISBN 3-7720-2050-X. DM 128. This well-produced volume is destined to become an essential instrument de travail for anyone interested in the...

Clotures du cycle arthurien: Etude et textes.
September 22, 1997... Richard Trachsler, Publications romanes et francaises 215 (Geneva: Droz, 1996) 576 pp. ISBN 2-600-00154-9. Sw. Fr. 83.65. A number of important articles by distinguished scholars have been written on the different ways in which the ending of...

Tristan et Iseut: Genese d'un mythe litteraire.
September 22, 1997... Jacques Chocheyras, Nouvelle bibliotheque du moyen age 36 (Paris: Champion, 1996). 272 pp.; 15 figures. ISBN 2-85203-551-0. F. Fr. 250. This is the kind of book one normally approaches with trepidation. The chances of there being a desirable...

Saggi di linguistica trovadorica: saggi su 'Girart de Roussillon,' Marcabruno, Bernart de Ventadorn, Raimbaut d'Aurenga, Arnaut Daniel e sull'uso letterario di oc e oil nel Trecento italiano.
September 22, 1997... Maurizio Perugi, Romanica et comparatistica: sprach- und literaturwissenschaftliche Studien 21 (Tubingen: Stauffenburg, 1995). 197 PP. ISBN 3-923721-71-4. DM 58. This is a collection of individual studies, detailed in the title. The first...

Manieres de langage (1396, 1399, 1415).
September 22, 1997... ed. Andres M. Kristol, Anglo-Norman Text Society 53 (London: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 199 5). i + 118 pp. ISBN 0-90547433-3. 15.00 [pounds sterling]. This publication is to be welcomed as bringing together for the first time three texts...

Le Present de Marie.
September 22, 1997... Milena Mikhailova, (Paris, New York and Amsterdam: Diderot, 1996). 298 pp. ISBN 2-84134-060-0. F. Fr. 125. It may not be immediately apparent to many readers that the reference in the title of this volume is to a fine in the Prologue of Marie...

Pierre d'Abernon of Fetcham: La Vie de seint Richard evesque de Cycestre.
September 22, 1997... Ed. D. W. Russell, Anglo-Norman Text Society 51 (London: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1995). xiii + 175 pp.; 1 plate. ISBN 0-905474-31-7. 15.00 [pounds sterling]. This complete edition supersedes A. T. Baker's edition of 1910 (RLR, 53, 245-396)....

La Belle Helene de Constantinople.
September 22, 1997... edition critique par Claude Roussel, Textes litteraires francais 454 (Geneva: Droz, 1995). 942 pp. ISBN 2-600-00077-2. Sw. Fr. 161.20. La Belle Hiline de Constantinople is a 15,538-line chanson d'aventures extant in three fifteenth-century...

The Death of the Troubadour: The Late Medieval Resistance to the Renaissance.
September 22, 1997... Gregory B. Stone, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994). 229 pp. ISBN 0-8122-3214-3. 29.95 [pounds sterling]. This ambitious book, as its tide indicates, yokes together two arguments. The first concerns the issue of...

The Cambridge History of Italian Literature.
September 22, 1997... ed. Peter Brand and Lino Pertile (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). xxxiv + 701 pp. ISBN 0-521-43492-0. 70.00 [pounds sterling]. In these days of theory it is a pleasure to report a book, written in jargon-free English, which so...

"Sole nuovo, luce nuova": saggi sul rinnovamento culturale in Dante.
September 22, 1997... Zygmunt Baranski, (Turin: Scriptorium, 1996). 319 pp. ISBN 88-86231-28. L 35,000. Zygmunt Baranski's book of essays on cultural renewal in Dante draws together a number of papers which, though at times a little reluctant to settle down...

Dante Now: Current Trends in Dante Studies.
September 22, 1997... Ed. Theodore J. Cachey Jr, The William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante Studies I (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995). xxi + 283 pp. ISBN 0-268-00875-2. 19-95. [pounds sterling]. Dante Now is the first publication in...

The Story of a Story Across Cultures: The Case of the 'Doncella Teodor.'
September 22, 1997... Margaret R. Parker, Coleccion Tamesis A 161 (London: Tamesis, 1996; distributed by Boydell & Brewer). x + 15 3 pp. ISBN 1-85566-038-5. 29.50 [pounds sterling]. The story of the slave girl Tawaddud, who confounds a hostile panel of wise men...

Medieval Listening and Reading: The Primary Reception of German Literature, 800-1300.
September 22, 1997... Dennis H. Green, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 512 pp. ISBN 0-521-44493-4. 55.00 [pounds sterling]. In his latest book Dennis H. Green concentrates on medieval German evidence of `listening and reading' on the receivers' and...

Ywain auf Schloss Rodenegg: Eine Bildergeschichte nach dem 'Iwein' Hartmanns von Aue.
September 22, 1997... Volker Schupp and Hans Szklenar, (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1996). 120 pp. ISBN 3-7995-4248-3. DM 29. In 1904 Otto Piper noted in his book on Austrian castles that in Rodenegg, near Brixen in South Tyrol, there was an old chapel whose walls bore...

Marquard vom Stein: 'Der Ritter von Turn,' Kommentar.
September 22, 1997... ed. Peter Ganz, Nigel Palmer, Lothar Schmitt and Christopher Wells, Texte des spaten Mittelalters und der fruhen Neuzeit 37 (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1996). 207 PP. ISBN 3-503-03721-7. DM 68. Der Rifter vom Turn is a translation of Le Livre du...

Old Norse Images of Women.
September 22, 1997... Jenny Jochens, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996). 326 pp. ISBN 0-8122-3358-1. 37.50 [pounds sterling]. A companion volume to the 1995 Women in Old Norse Society, Old Norse Images of Women analyses the representations of...

St. Oswald of Worcester: Life and Influence.
September 22, 1997... ed. Nicholas Brooks and Catherine Cubitt, Studies in the Early History of Britain: The Makers of England 2 (London and New York: Leicester University Press, 1996). xvii + 365 pp.; 12 plates; 22 figures. ISBN 0-7185-0003-2. 49.95 [pounds...

Die Welfen un ihr Braunschweiger Hof.
September 22, 1997... ed. Bernd Schneidmuller, Wolfenbutteler Mittelalter-Studien 7 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1995). vi + 579 pp. DM 148. Alongside recent general treatments of the medieval court (e.g. by J. Bumke and J. Fleckenstein) we have also been given of late...

City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe.
September 22, 1997... ed. Barbara A. Hanawalt and Kathryn L. Reyerson, Medieval Studies at Minnesota 6 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994). xx + 331 pp. ISBN 0-8166-2359-7, $49-95 (hard covers); ISBN 0-8116-23 60-0, $15.95 (p/b). Barbara A. Hanawalt...

Medieval Towns.
September 22, 1997... John Schofield and Alan Vince, (London: Leicester University Press, 1994). xii + z43 pp.; numerous figures. ISBN 0-7185-1294-4, 40.00 [pounds sterling] (hard covers); ISBN 0-7185-1971-X, 14.99 [pounds sterling] (p/b). Barbara A. Hanawalt and...