Kathy Lavezzo
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781501703157
- eISBN:
- 9781501706158
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501703157.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
England during the Middle Ages was at the forefront of European antisemitism. It was in medieval Norwich that the notorious “blood libel” was first introduced when a resident accused the city's ...
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England during the Middle Ages was at the forefront of European antisemitism. It was in medieval Norwich that the notorious “blood libel” was first introduced when a resident accused the city's Jewish leaders of abducting and ritually murdering a local boy. This book rethinks the complex and contradictory relation between England's rejection of “the Jew” and the centrality of Jews to classic English literature. Drawing on literary, historical, and cartographic texts, the book charts an entangled Jewish imaginative presence in English culture. It tracks how English writers from Bede to John Milton imagine Jews via buildings—tombs, latrines and especially houses—that support fantasies of exile. Epitomizing this trope is the blood libel and its implication that Jews cannot be accommodated in England because of the anti-Christian violence they allegedly perform in their homes. In the Croxton Play of the Sacrament, Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, and Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, the Jewish house not only serves as a lethal trap but also as the site of an emerging bourgeoisie incompatible with Christian pieties. In the book's epilogue, the chapters advance the inquiry into Victorian England and the relationship between Charles Dickens (whose Fagin is the second most infamous Jew in English literature after Shylock) and the Jewish couple that purchased his London home, Tavistock House, showing how far relations between gentiles and Jews in England had (and had not) evolved.Less
England during the Middle Ages was at the forefront of European antisemitism. It was in medieval Norwich that the notorious “blood libel” was first introduced when a resident accused the city's Jewish leaders of abducting and ritually murdering a local boy. This book rethinks the complex and contradictory relation between England's rejection of “the Jew” and the centrality of Jews to classic English literature. Drawing on literary, historical, and cartographic texts, the book charts an entangled Jewish imaginative presence in English culture. It tracks how English writers from Bede to John Milton imagine Jews via buildings—tombs, latrines and especially houses—that support fantasies of exile. Epitomizing this trope is the blood libel and its implication that Jews cannot be accommodated in England because of the anti-Christian violence they allegedly perform in their homes. In the Croxton Play of the Sacrament, Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, and Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, the Jewish house not only serves as a lethal trap but also as the site of an emerging bourgeoisie incompatible with Christian pieties. In the book's epilogue, the chapters advance the inquiry into Victorian England and the relationship between Charles Dickens (whose Fagin is the second most infamous Jew in English literature after Shylock) and the Jewish couple that purchased his London home, Tavistock House, showing how far relations between gentiles and Jews in England had (and had not) evolved.
Thomas Prendergast and Stephanie Trigg
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526126863
- eISBN:
- 9781526142009
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526126863.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This book destabilises the customary disciplinary and epistemological oppositions between medieval studies and modern medievalism. It argues that the twinned concepts of “the medieval” and ...
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This book destabilises the customary disciplinary and epistemological oppositions between medieval studies and modern medievalism. It argues that the twinned concepts of “the medieval” and post-medieval “medievalism” are mutually though unevenly constitutive, not just in the contemporary era, but from the medieval period on. Medieval and medievalist culture share similar concerns about the nature of temporality, and the means by which we approach or “touch” the past, whether through textual or material culture, or the conceptual frames through which we approach those artefacts. Those approaches are often affective ones, often structured around love, abjection and discontent. Medieval writers offer powerful models for the ways in which contemporary desire determines the constitution of the past. This desire can not only connect us with the past but can reconnect present readers with the lost history of what we call the medievalism of the medievals. In other words, to come to terms with the history of the medieval is to understand that it already offers us a model of how to relate to the past. The book ranges across literary and historical texts, but is equally attentive to material culture and its problematic witness to the reality of the historical past.Less
This book destabilises the customary disciplinary and epistemological oppositions between medieval studies and modern medievalism. It argues that the twinned concepts of “the medieval” and post-medieval “medievalism” are mutually though unevenly constitutive, not just in the contemporary era, but from the medieval period on. Medieval and medievalist culture share similar concerns about the nature of temporality, and the means by which we approach or “touch” the past, whether through textual or material culture, or the conceptual frames through which we approach those artefacts. Those approaches are often affective ones, often structured around love, abjection and discontent. Medieval writers offer powerful models for the ways in which contemporary desire determines the constitution of the past. This desire can not only connect us with the past but can reconnect present readers with the lost history of what we call the medievalism of the medievals. In other words, to come to terms with the history of the medieval is to understand that it already offers us a model of how to relate to the past. The book ranges across literary and historical texts, but is equally attentive to material culture and its problematic witness to the reality of the historical past.
John Watkins
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781501707575
- eISBN:
- 9781501708527
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501707575.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
The Renaissance jurist Alberico Gentili once quipped that, just like comedies, all wars end in a marriage. In medieval and early modern Europe, marriage treaties were a perennial feature of the ...
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The Renaissance jurist Alberico Gentili once quipped that, just like comedies, all wars end in a marriage. In medieval and early modern Europe, marriage treaties were a perennial feature of the diplomatic landscape. When one ruler decided to make peace with his enemy, the two parties often sealed their settlement with marriages between their respective families. This book traces the history of the practice, focusing on the unusually close relationship between diplomacy and literary production in Western Europe from antiquity through the seventeenth century, when marriage began to lose its effectiveness and prestige as a tool of diplomacy. The book begins with Virgil's foundational myth of the marriage between the Trojan hero Aeneas and the Latin princess, an account that formed the basis for numerous medieval and Renaissance celebrations of dynastic marriages by courtly poets and propagandists. It follows the slow decline of diplomatic marriage as both a tool of statecraft and a literary subject, exploring the skepticism and suspicion with which it was viewed in the works of Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare. The book argues that the plays of Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine signal the passing of an international order that had once accorded women a place of unique dignity and respect.Less
The Renaissance jurist Alberico Gentili once quipped that, just like comedies, all wars end in a marriage. In medieval and early modern Europe, marriage treaties were a perennial feature of the diplomatic landscape. When one ruler decided to make peace with his enemy, the two parties often sealed their settlement with marriages between their respective families. This book traces the history of the practice, focusing on the unusually close relationship between diplomacy and literary production in Western Europe from antiquity through the seventeenth century, when marriage began to lose its effectiveness and prestige as a tool of diplomacy. The book begins with Virgil's foundational myth of the marriage between the Trojan hero Aeneas and the Latin princess, an account that formed the basis for numerous medieval and Renaissance celebrations of dynastic marriages by courtly poets and propagandists. It follows the slow decline of diplomatic marriage as both a tool of statecraft and a literary subject, exploring the skepticism and suspicion with which it was viewed in the works of Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare. The book argues that the plays of Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine signal the passing of an international order that had once accorded women a place of unique dignity and respect.
J. A. Burrow
- Published in print:
- 1988
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198117551
- eISBN:
- 9780191670985
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117551.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
Medieval Europe inherited from antiquity a rich and varied tradition of thought about the aetates hominum. Scholars divided human life into three, four, six, or seven ages, and so related it to ...
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Medieval Europe inherited from antiquity a rich and varied tradition of thought about the aetates hominum. Scholars divided human life into three, four, six, or seven ages, and so related it to larger orders of nature and history in which similar patterns were to be found. Thus, the seven ages correspond to and are governed by the seven planets. These ideas flowed through the Middle Ages in many channels: sermons and Bible commentaries, moral and political treatises, encyclopaedias and lexicons, medical and astrological handbooks, didactic and courtly poems, tapestries, wall-paintings, and stained-glass windows. The author's account of this material, using mainly but not exclusively English medieval sources, includes a consideration of some of the ways in which such ideas of natural order entered into the medieval writer's assessment of human behaviour. The book ends by showing how medieval writers commonly recognize and endorse the natural processes by which ordinary folk pass from the joys and folly of youth to the sorrows and wisdom of old age.Less
Medieval Europe inherited from antiquity a rich and varied tradition of thought about the aetates hominum. Scholars divided human life into three, four, six, or seven ages, and so related it to larger orders of nature and history in which similar patterns were to be found. Thus, the seven ages correspond to and are governed by the seven planets. These ideas flowed through the Middle Ages in many channels: sermons and Bible commentaries, moral and political treatises, encyclopaedias and lexicons, medical and astrological handbooks, didactic and courtly poems, tapestries, wall-paintings, and stained-glass windows. The author's account of this material, using mainly but not exclusively English medieval sources, includes a consideration of some of the ways in which such ideas of natural order entered into the medieval writer's assessment of human behaviour. The book ends by showing how medieval writers commonly recognize and endorse the natural processes by which ordinary folk pass from the joys and folly of youth to the sorrows and wisdom of old age.
Sarah Kay
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226436739
- eISBN:
- 9780226436876
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226436876.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This book explores the relations between humans and other animals as they appear to a reader of medieval bestiaries, given that almost all of them are realized as parchment books and that parchment, ...
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This book explores the relations between humans and other animals as they appear to a reader of medieval bestiaries, given that almost all of them are realized as parchment books and that parchment, although made from animal skin, looks much like human skin. Using Didier Anzieu’s concept of the Skin Ego and a theory of reading as assuming a second skin, the book explores how a supposedly human identity can be challenged by a reading process that inserts the reader into an animal skin. It examines the treatment of bestiary creatures in relation to the pages on which their entries are copied, showing how bestiarists’ teachings may be confirmed or undermined by the interaction between a text’s content, which is often focused on animals’ skins, their illustrations, which often outline or highlight those skins, and its material support, an actual instance of skin. The pages of many different manuscripts, transmitting numerous bestiary versions, are read closely in order to bring out possible interconnections between word, image, and parchment. Each chapter addresses an aspect of human-animal relations that is thematized both by medieval bestiaries and by modern theorists of the posthuman such as Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Derrida. In-depth coverage of Latin and French bestiary versions produces a new overall account of the development of the Physiologus tradition in Western Europe, one which attributes more importance to Continental traditions than previous Anglophone scholarship.Less
This book explores the relations between humans and other animals as they appear to a reader of medieval bestiaries, given that almost all of them are realized as parchment books and that parchment, although made from animal skin, looks much like human skin. Using Didier Anzieu’s concept of the Skin Ego and a theory of reading as assuming a second skin, the book explores how a supposedly human identity can be challenged by a reading process that inserts the reader into an animal skin. It examines the treatment of bestiary creatures in relation to the pages on which their entries are copied, showing how bestiarists’ teachings may be confirmed or undermined by the interaction between a text’s content, which is often focused on animals’ skins, their illustrations, which often outline or highlight those skins, and its material support, an actual instance of skin. The pages of many different manuscripts, transmitting numerous bestiary versions, are read closely in order to bring out possible interconnections between word, image, and parchment. Each chapter addresses an aspect of human-animal relations that is thematized both by medieval bestiaries and by modern theorists of the posthuman such as Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Derrida. In-depth coverage of Latin and French bestiary versions produces a new overall account of the development of the Physiologus tradition in Western Europe, one which attributes more importance to Continental traditions than previous Anglophone scholarship.
R. Bloch
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226059686
- eISBN:
- 9780226059693
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226059693.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This book offers a fundamental reconception of the person generally assumed to be the first woman writer in French, the author known as Marie de France. It considers all of the writing ascribed to ...
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This book offers a fundamental reconception of the person generally assumed to be the first woman writer in French, the author known as Marie de France. It considers all of the writing ascribed to Marie, including her famous Lais, her 103 animal fables, and the earliest vernacular Saint Patrick's Purgatory. Evidence about Marie de France's life is so meager that we know next to nothing about her—not where she was born and to what rank, who her parents were, whether she was married or single, where she lived and might have traveled, whether she dwelled in cloister or at court, nor whether in England or France. In the face of this great writer's near anonymity, scholars have assumed her to be a simple, naive, and modest Christian figure. This book's claim, in contrast, is that Marie is among the most self-conscious, sophisticated, complicated, and disturbing figures of her time—the Joyce of the twelfth century. At a moment of great historical turning, the so-called Renaissance of the twelfth century, Marie was both a disrupter of prevailing cultural values and a founder of new ones. Her works, it is argued, reveal an author obsessed by writing, by memory, and by translation, and acutely aware not only of her role in the preservation of cultural memory, but of the transforming psychological, social, and political effects of writing within an oral tradition. Marie's intervention lies in her obsession with the performative capacities of literature.Less
This book offers a fundamental reconception of the person generally assumed to be the first woman writer in French, the author known as Marie de France. It considers all of the writing ascribed to Marie, including her famous Lais, her 103 animal fables, and the earliest vernacular Saint Patrick's Purgatory. Evidence about Marie de France's life is so meager that we know next to nothing about her—not where she was born and to what rank, who her parents were, whether she was married or single, where she lived and might have traveled, whether she dwelled in cloister or at court, nor whether in England or France. In the face of this great writer's near anonymity, scholars have assumed her to be a simple, naive, and modest Christian figure. This book's claim, in contrast, is that Marie is among the most self-conscious, sophisticated, complicated, and disturbing figures of her time—the Joyce of the twelfth century. At a moment of great historical turning, the so-called Renaissance of the twelfth century, Marie was both a disrupter of prevailing cultural values and a founder of new ones. Her works, it is argued, reveal an author obsessed by writing, by memory, and by translation, and acutely aware not only of her role in the preservation of cultural memory, but of the transforming psychological, social, and political effects of writing within an oral tradition. Marie's intervention lies in her obsession with the performative capacities of literature.
Peter Godman
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780198719229
- eISBN:
- 9780191788499
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198719229.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, Early and Medieval Literature
This book is about one of the most famous and least understood authors of the Latin Middle Ages. We know him by the pseudonym of Archpoet. Setting his world and his works in their historical ...
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This book is about one of the most famous and least understood authors of the Latin Middle Ages. We know him by the pseudonym of Archpoet. Setting his world and his works in their historical contexts, the book argues that they provide insight into a brilliant counter-culture of medieval Germany. Its subtlest exponent did not indulge in literary play but refashioned the political, social, and religious roles available to a twelfth-century thinker in order to create, for himself and his patron, an identity alternative to the norms of clerical conformity prevalent elsewhere in Europe. At a time when Germans were being decried as backward barbarians, he produced a manifesto of intellectual heterodoxy which wittily challenged the truth-claims made by humourless moralists. The Archpoet and Medieval Culture reconsiders the categories in which the literature of the Middle Ages is interpreted and suggests a less literal mode of reading the sources to historians.Less
This book is about one of the most famous and least understood authors of the Latin Middle Ages. We know him by the pseudonym of Archpoet. Setting his world and his works in their historical contexts, the book argues that they provide insight into a brilliant counter-culture of medieval Germany. Its subtlest exponent did not indulge in literary play but refashioned the political, social, and religious roles available to a twelfth-century thinker in order to create, for himself and his patron, an identity alternative to the norms of clerical conformity prevalent elsewhere in Europe. At a time when Germans were being decried as backward barbarians, he produced a manifesto of intellectual heterodoxy which wittily challenged the truth-claims made by humourless moralists. The Archpoet and Medieval Culture reconsiders the categories in which the literature of the Middle Ages is interpreted and suggests a less literal mode of reading the sources to historians.
Nicolette Zeeman
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198860242
- eISBN:
- 9780191892431
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198860242.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
The Arts of Disruption offers a series of new readings of the allegorical poem Piers Plowman: but it is also a book about allegory. It argues not just that there are distinctively disruptive ‘arts’ ...
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The Arts of Disruption offers a series of new readings of the allegorical poem Piers Plowman: but it is also a book about allegory. It argues not just that there are distinctively disruptive ‘arts’ that occur in allegory, but that allegory, because it is interested in the difficulty of making meaning, is itself a disruptive art. The book approaches this topic via the study of five medieval allegorical narrative structures that exploit diegetic conflict and disruption. Although very different, they all bring together contrasting descriptions of spiritual process, in order to develop new understanding and excite moral or devotional change. These five structures are: the paradiastolic ‘hypocritical figure’ (such as vices masked by being made to look like ‘adjacent’ virtues), personification debate, violent language and gestures of apophasis, narratives of bodily decline, and grail romance. Each appears in a range of texts, which the book explores, along with other connected materials in medieval rhetoric, logic, grammar, spiritual thought, ethics, medicine, and romance iconography. These allegorical narrative structures appear radically transformed in Piers Plowman, where the poem makes further meaning out of the friction between them. Much of the allegorical work of the poem occurs at the points of their intersection, and within the conceptual gaps that open up between them. Ranging across a wide variety of medieval allegorical texts, the book shows from many perspectives allegory’s juxtaposition of the heterogeneous and its questioning of supposed continuities.Less
The Arts of Disruption offers a series of new readings of the allegorical poem Piers Plowman: but it is also a book about allegory. It argues not just that there are distinctively disruptive ‘arts’ that occur in allegory, but that allegory, because it is interested in the difficulty of making meaning, is itself a disruptive art. The book approaches this topic via the study of five medieval allegorical narrative structures that exploit diegetic conflict and disruption. Although very different, they all bring together contrasting descriptions of spiritual process, in order to develop new understanding and excite moral or devotional change. These five structures are: the paradiastolic ‘hypocritical figure’ (such as vices masked by being made to look like ‘adjacent’ virtues), personification debate, violent language and gestures of apophasis, narratives of bodily decline, and grail romance. Each appears in a range of texts, which the book explores, along with other connected materials in medieval rhetoric, logic, grammar, spiritual thought, ethics, medicine, and romance iconography. These allegorical narrative structures appear radically transformed in Piers Plowman, where the poem makes further meaning out of the friction between them. Much of the allegorical work of the poem occurs at the points of their intersection, and within the conceptual gaps that open up between them. Ranging across a wide variety of medieval allegorical texts, the book shows from many perspectives allegory’s juxtaposition of the heterogeneous and its questioning of supposed continuities.
D. Vance Smith
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226640853
- eISBN:
- 9780226641041
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226641041.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This book argues that the problem of how to designate death produces a long tradition of literature about dying in Old and Middle English, a literature that intensively and self-reflexively imagines ...
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This book argues that the problem of how to designate death produces a long tradition of literature about dying in Old and Middle English, a literature that intensively and self-reflexively imagines how the very terms of literature might solve the problem of the termination of life. The book ranges between close readings of literature’s attempts to imagine a relation with death in major poets like Geoffrey Chaucer and the Pearl poet, and philosophical attempts to designate death despite its impossibility: the relation between finitude and form. The book also explores the relation between crypt and archive, the philosophy of language and logic, and contemporary theorizing about death and dying, from Martin Heidegger to Maurice Blanchot and Gillian Rose.Less
This book argues that the problem of how to designate death produces a long tradition of literature about dying in Old and Middle English, a literature that intensively and self-reflexively imagines how the very terms of literature might solve the problem of the termination of life. The book ranges between close readings of literature’s attempts to imagine a relation with death in major poets like Geoffrey Chaucer and the Pearl poet, and philosophical attempts to designate death despite its impossibility: the relation between finitude and form. The book also explores the relation between crypt and archive, the philosophy of language and logic, and contemporary theorizing about death and dying, from Martin Heidegger to Maurice Blanchot and Gillian Rose.
Marilina Cesario and Hugh Magennis (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780719097843
- eISBN:
- 9781526135896
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719097843.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This edited collection explores how knowledge was preserved and reinvented in the Middle Ages. Unlike previous publications, which are predominantly focused either on a specific historical period or ...
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This edited collection explores how knowledge was preserved and reinvented in the Middle Ages. Unlike previous publications, which are predominantly focused either on a specific historical period or on precise cultural and historical events, this volume, which includes essays spanning from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries, is intended to eschew traditional categorisations of periodisation and disciplines and to enable the establishment of connections and cross-sections between different departments of knowledge, including the history of science (computus, prognostication), the history of art, literature, theology (homilies, prayers, hagiography, contemplative texts), music, historiography and geography. As suggested by its title, the collection does not pretend to aim at inclusiveness or comprehensiveness but is intended to highlight suggestive strands of what is a very wide topic. The chapters in this volume are grouped into four sections: I, Anthologies of Knowledge; II Transmission of Christian Traditions; III, Past and Present; and IV, Knowledge and Materiality, which are intended to provide the reader with a further thematic framework for approaching aspects of knowledge. Aspects of knowledge is mainly aimed to an academic readership, including advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, and specialists of medieval literature, history of science, history of knowledge, history, geography, theology, music, philosophy, intellectual history, history of the language and material culture.Less
This edited collection explores how knowledge was preserved and reinvented in the Middle Ages. Unlike previous publications, which are predominantly focused either on a specific historical period or on precise cultural and historical events, this volume, which includes essays spanning from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries, is intended to eschew traditional categorisations of periodisation and disciplines and to enable the establishment of connections and cross-sections between different departments of knowledge, including the history of science (computus, prognostication), the history of art, literature, theology (homilies, prayers, hagiography, contemplative texts), music, historiography and geography. As suggested by its title, the collection does not pretend to aim at inclusiveness or comprehensiveness but is intended to highlight suggestive strands of what is a very wide topic. The chapters in this volume are grouped into four sections: I, Anthologies of Knowledge; II Transmission of Christian Traditions; III, Past and Present; and IV, Knowledge and Materiality, which are intended to provide the reader with a further thematic framework for approaching aspects of knowledge. Aspects of knowledge is mainly aimed to an academic readership, including advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, and specialists of medieval literature, history of science, history of knowledge, history, geography, theology, music, philosophy, intellectual history, history of the language and material culture.
David Clark
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199558155
- eISBN:
- 9780191721342
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199558155.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature, Anglo-Saxon / Old English Literature
This book argues for the importance of synoptically examining the whole range of same‐sex relations in the Anglo‐Saxon period, revisiting well‐known texts and issues (as well as material often ...
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This book argues for the importance of synoptically examining the whole range of same‐sex relations in the Anglo‐Saxon period, revisiting well‐known texts and issues (as well as material often considered marginal) from a radically different perspective. The introductory chapters first lay out the premises underlying the book and its critical context, then emphasise the need to avoid modern cultural assumptions about both male‐female and male‐male relationships, and underline the paramount place of homosocial bonds in Old English literature. Part II then investigates the construction of and attitudes to same‐sex acts and identities in ethnographic, penitential, and theological texts, ranging widely throughout the Old English corpus and drawing on Classical, Medieval Latin, and Old Norse material. Part III expands the focus to homosocial bonds in Old English literature in order to explore the range of associations for same‐sex intimacy and their representation in literary texts such as Genesis A, Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon, The Dream of the Rood, The Phoenix, and Ælfric's Lives of Saints. During the course of the book's argument, it uncovers several under‐researched issues and suggests fruitful approaches for their investigation. It concludes that, in omitting to ask certain questions of Anglo‐Saxon material, in being too willing to accept the status quo indicated by the extant corpus, in uncritically importing invisible (because normative) heterosexist assumptions in our reading, we risk misrepresenting the diversity and complexity that a more nuanced approach to issues of gender and sexuality suggests may be more genuinely characteristic of the period.Less
This book argues for the importance of synoptically examining the whole range of same‐sex relations in the Anglo‐Saxon period, revisiting well‐known texts and issues (as well as material often considered marginal) from a radically different perspective. The introductory chapters first lay out the premises underlying the book and its critical context, then emphasise the need to avoid modern cultural assumptions about both male‐female and male‐male relationships, and underline the paramount place of homosocial bonds in Old English literature. Part II then investigates the construction of and attitudes to same‐sex acts and identities in ethnographic, penitential, and theological texts, ranging widely throughout the Old English corpus and drawing on Classical, Medieval Latin, and Old Norse material. Part III expands the focus to homosocial bonds in Old English literature in order to explore the range of associations for same‐sex intimacy and their representation in literary texts such as Genesis A, Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon, The Dream of the Rood, The Phoenix, and Ælfric's Lives of Saints. During the course of the book's argument, it uncovers several under‐researched issues and suggests fruitful approaches for their investigation. It concludes that, in omitting to ask certain questions of Anglo‐Saxon material, in being too willing to accept the status quo indicated by the extant corpus, in uncritically importing invisible (because normative) heterosexist assumptions in our reading, we risk misrepresenting the diversity and complexity that a more nuanced approach to issues of gender and sexuality suggests may be more genuinely characteristic of the period.
Lynn T. Ramey
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780813060071
- eISBN:
- 9780813050478
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813060071.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
Bringing far-removed time periods into startling conversation, this book argues that certain attitudes and practices present in Europe's Middle Ages were foundational in the development of the ...
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Bringing far-removed time periods into startling conversation, this book argues that certain attitudes and practices present in Europe's Middle Ages were foundational in the development of the western concept of race. As early as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, society was already preoccupied with skin color. Using historical, literary, and artistic sources, the book explores the multitude of ways the coding of black as “evil” and white as “good” existed in medieval European societies.Less
Bringing far-removed time periods into startling conversation, this book argues that certain attitudes and practices present in Europe's Middle Ages were foundational in the development of the western concept of race. As early as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, society was already preoccupied with skin color. Using historical, literary, and artistic sources, the book explores the multitude of ways the coding of black as “evil” and white as “good” existed in medieval European societies.
Katherine A. Brown
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780813049175
- eISBN:
- 9780813050034
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813049175.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
The Old French fabliaux are humorous short stories from the 13th century that resemble some of the most memorable tales in Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron (1348-1351). Yet their humor and ostensible ...
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The Old French fabliaux are humorous short stories from the 13th century that resemble some of the most memorable tales in Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron (1348-1351). Yet their humor and ostensible frivolity conceal a serious challenge to didactic literature. A century later, Boccaccio used these types of tales to promote the openness of literary interpretation as a choice for the reader. This study shows that the fabliaux had a greater influence on the Decameron than has previously been recognized. Boccaccio took from the fabliaux the use of reversal as a technique for manipulating narrative structure; in addition, the manuscripts in which the fabliaux were transmitted served as models for the organization of the Decameron. The use of reversal in both the fabliaux and the Decameron underscores a paradigm shift in medieval thinking away from purely didactic literature toward a literature of enjoyment. Reversal in the fabliaux brings together linguistic and thematic opposites and interchanges them in order to show that these opposites offer equally valid positions from which the stories can be interpreted. Reversal also allows the fabliaux to adapt to a variety of contemporaneous genres while still maintaining their fundamental character. The fabliaux's use of reversal disrupts the moral didacticism preserved with the texts in manuscript anthologies. As Boccaccio standardized the medieval short story in the Decameron, he drew from both the fabliaux tradition and from the manuscript anthologies in which they were transmitted in order to conjoin diverse genres and provoke a multiplicity of interpretations.Less
The Old French fabliaux are humorous short stories from the 13th century that resemble some of the most memorable tales in Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron (1348-1351). Yet their humor and ostensible frivolity conceal a serious challenge to didactic literature. A century later, Boccaccio used these types of tales to promote the openness of literary interpretation as a choice for the reader. This study shows that the fabliaux had a greater influence on the Decameron than has previously been recognized. Boccaccio took from the fabliaux the use of reversal as a technique for manipulating narrative structure; in addition, the manuscripts in which the fabliaux were transmitted served as models for the organization of the Decameron. The use of reversal in both the fabliaux and the Decameron underscores a paradigm shift in medieval thinking away from purely didactic literature toward a literature of enjoyment. Reversal in the fabliaux brings together linguistic and thematic opposites and interchanges them in order to show that these opposites offer equally valid positions from which the stories can be interpreted. Reversal also allows the fabliaux to adapt to a variety of contemporaneous genres while still maintaining their fundamental character. The fabliaux's use of reversal disrupts the moral didacticism preserved with the texts in manuscript anthologies. As Boccaccio standardized the medieval short story in the Decameron, he drew from both the fabliaux tradition and from the manuscript anthologies in which they were transmitted in order to conjoin diverse genres and provoke a multiplicity of interpretations.
Nu'aym b. Hammad al-Marwazi
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474424103
- eISBN:
- 9781474435659
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474424103.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
“The Book of Tribulations by Nu`aym b. Hammad al-Marwazi (d. 844) is the earliest Muslim apocalyptic work to come down to us. Its contents focus upon the cataclysmic events to happen before the end ...
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“The Book of Tribulations by Nu`aym b. Hammad al-Marwazi (d. 844) is the earliest Muslim apocalyptic work to come down to us. Its contents focus upon the cataclysmic events to happen before the end of the world, the wars against the Byzantines, and the Turks, and the Muslim civil wars. There is extensive material about the Mahdi (messianic figure), the Muslim Antichrist and the return of Jesus, as well as descriptions of Gog and Magog. Much of the material in Nu`aym today is utilized by Salafi-jihadi groups fighting in Syria and Iraq.Less
“The Book of Tribulations by Nu`aym b. Hammad al-Marwazi (d. 844) is the earliest Muslim apocalyptic work to come down to us. Its contents focus upon the cataclysmic events to happen before the end of the world, the wars against the Byzantines, and the Turks, and the Muslim civil wars. There is extensive material about the Mahdi (messianic figure), the Muslim Antichrist and the return of Jesus, as well as descriptions of Gog and Magog. Much of the material in Nu`aym today is utilized by Salafi-jihadi groups fighting in Syria and Iraq.
Dorothy Yamamoto
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198186748
- eISBN:
- 9780191718564
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198186748.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
Animals and ‘wild men’ are everywhere in medieval culture, but their role in illuminating medieval constructions of humanity has never been properly explored. This book gathers together a large ...
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Animals and ‘wild men’ are everywhere in medieval culture, but their role in illuminating medieval constructions of humanity has never been properly explored. This book gathers together a large number of themes and subjects, including the Bestiary, heraldry, and hunting, and examines them as part of a unified discourse about the body and its creative transformations. ‘Human’ and ‘animal’ are terms traditionally opposed to one another, but their relationship must always be characterized by a dynamic instability. Humans scout into the animal zone, manipulating and reshaping ‘animal’ bodies in accordance with their own social imaginings — yet these forays are risky since they lead to questions about what humanity consists in, and whether it can ever be forfeited. Studies of birds, foxes, ‘game’ animals, the wild man, and shape-shifting women fill out the argument of this book, which examines works by Chaucer, Gower, the Gawain-poet, and Henryson, as well as showing that many less familiar texts have rewards that an informed reading can reveal.Less
Animals and ‘wild men’ are everywhere in medieval culture, but their role in illuminating medieval constructions of humanity has never been properly explored. This book gathers together a large number of themes and subjects, including the Bestiary, heraldry, and hunting, and examines them as part of a unified discourse about the body and its creative transformations. ‘Human’ and ‘animal’ are terms traditionally opposed to one another, but their relationship must always be characterized by a dynamic instability. Humans scout into the animal zone, manipulating and reshaping ‘animal’ bodies in accordance with their own social imaginings — yet these forays are risky since they lead to questions about what humanity consists in, and whether it can ever be forfeited. Studies of birds, foxes, ‘game’ animals, the wild man, and shape-shifting women fill out the argument of this book, which examines works by Chaucer, Gower, the Gawain-poet, and Henryson, as well as showing that many less familiar texts have rewards that an informed reading can reveal.
Alcuin Blamires
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198186304
- eISBN:
- 9780191674501
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198186304.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
Misogyny is of course not the whole story of medieval discourse on women: medieval culture also envisaged a case for women. But hitherto studies of profeminine attitudes in that period's culture have ...
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Misogyny is of course not the whole story of medieval discourse on women: medieval culture also envisaged a case for women. But hitherto studies of profeminine attitudes in that period's culture have tended to concentrate on courtly literature, on female visionary writings, or on attempts to transcend misogyny by major authors such as Christine de Pizan and Chaucer. This book sets out to demonstrate something different: that there existed from early in the Middle Ages a corpus of substantial traditions in defence of women, on which the more familiar authors drew, and that this corpus itself consolidated strands of profeminine thought that had been present as far back as the patristic literature of the 4th century. The book surveys extant writings formally defending women in the Middle Ages; identifies a source for profeminine argument in biblical apocrypha; offers a series of explorations of the background and circulation of central arguments on behalf of women; and seeks to situate relevant texts by Christine de Pizan, Chaucer, Abelard, and Hrotsvitha in relation to these arguments. Topics covered range from the privileges of women, and pro-Eve polemic, to the social and moral strengths attributed to women, and to the powerful models frequently disruptive of patriarchal complacency presented by Old and New Testament women. The contribution made by these emphases (which are not to be confused with feminism in a modern sense) to medieval constructions of gender is throughout critically assessed.Less
Misogyny is of course not the whole story of medieval discourse on women: medieval culture also envisaged a case for women. But hitherto studies of profeminine attitudes in that period's culture have tended to concentrate on courtly literature, on female visionary writings, or on attempts to transcend misogyny by major authors such as Christine de Pizan and Chaucer. This book sets out to demonstrate something different: that there existed from early in the Middle Ages a corpus of substantial traditions in defence of women, on which the more familiar authors drew, and that this corpus itself consolidated strands of profeminine thought that had been present as far back as the patristic literature of the 4th century. The book surveys extant writings formally defending women in the Middle Ages; identifies a source for profeminine argument in biblical apocrypha; offers a series of explorations of the background and circulation of central arguments on behalf of women; and seeks to situate relevant texts by Christine de Pizan, Chaucer, Abelard, and Hrotsvitha in relation to these arguments. Topics covered range from the privileges of women, and pro-Eve polemic, to the social and moral strengths attributed to women, and to the powerful models frequently disruptive of patriarchal complacency presented by Old and New Testament women. The contribution made by these emphases (which are not to be confused with feminism in a modern sense) to medieval constructions of gender is throughout critically assessed.
Sarah Kay
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198151920
- eISBN:
- 9780191672903
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198151920.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature, European Literature
This is a major reassessment of the relation between the medieval French chansons de geste and the romance genre. Critics have traditionally seen romance as a superior development of the chanson de ...
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This is a major reassessment of the relation between the medieval French chansons de geste and the romance genre. Critics have traditionally seen romance as a superior development of the chanson de geste. The chansons de geste are seen as ‘formulaic’, composed from a public fund of pre-existant and primarily oral narratives and motifs; romance on the other hand, is seen as a more sophisticated product of a newly ‘literary’ story-telling, in line with the more complex social and political conditions of the time. The author rejects this ‘developmental’ model of literary history and, through detailed readings of large numbers of texts – from the well-known Renaut de Montauban or Raoul de Cambrai to the unjustly neglected Doon de la Roche or Orson de Beauvais – reveals the simultaneity of the chansons de geste and romance in medieval culture. Drawing tellingly on recent literary and feminist theory, the author argues that the chanson de geste and romance are engaged in a productive and telling dialogue; moreover, each genre illuminates the ‘political unconscious’ of the other: those political conflicts and contradictions that the text attempts to evade and disguise. In particular, the author contends that romance brings with it new forms of sexism and patriarchy – forms much closer to those of the present – and that these need to be read against the politics of sexual difference inscribed in chansons de geste.Less
This is a major reassessment of the relation between the medieval French chansons de geste and the romance genre. Critics have traditionally seen romance as a superior development of the chanson de geste. The chansons de geste are seen as ‘formulaic’, composed from a public fund of pre-existant and primarily oral narratives and motifs; romance on the other hand, is seen as a more sophisticated product of a newly ‘literary’ story-telling, in line with the more complex social and political conditions of the time. The author rejects this ‘developmental’ model of literary history and, through detailed readings of large numbers of texts – from the well-known Renaut de Montauban or Raoul de Cambrai to the unjustly neglected Doon de la Roche or Orson de Beauvais – reveals the simultaneity of the chansons de geste and romance in medieval culture. Drawing tellingly on recent literary and feminist theory, the author argues that the chanson de geste and romance are engaged in a productive and telling dialogue; moreover, each genre illuminates the ‘political unconscious’ of the other: those political conflicts and contradictions that the text attempts to evade and disguise. In particular, the author contends that romance brings with it new forms of sexism and patriarchy – forms much closer to those of the present – and that these need to be read against the politics of sexual difference inscribed in chansons de geste.
K. P. Clarke
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199607778
- eISBN:
- 9780191729546
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199607778.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature, European Literature
This book breaks important new ground in the study of Chaucer's various engagements with Italian literary culture, taking a more dynamic approach to Chaucer's Italian sources than has previously been ...
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This book breaks important new ground in the study of Chaucer's various engagements with Italian literary culture, taking a more dynamic approach to Chaucer's Italian sources than has previously been available. Most treatments of such influences do not take sufficient account of the material contexts in which these sources were available to Chaucer and his contemporaries. Manuscripts of the major works of Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch circulated in a variety of formats, and often the margins of their texts were loci for extensive commentary and glossing. These traditions of glossing and commentary represent one of the most striking features of fourteenth-century Italian literary culture. Not only that, but the authors themselves were responsible for some of this commentary material, from Dante's own prosimetra Vita nova and Convivio, to the extensive commentary accompanying Boccaccio's Teseida. The startling example of Francesco d'Amaretto Mannelli's glosses in his copy of the Decameron, copied in 1384, is discussed in detail for the first time. His refiguring of Griselda offers an important perspective on the reception of this story that is exactly contemporary with Chaucer. This book offers a new perspective on Chaucer and Italy by highlighting the materiality of his sources, reconstructing his textual, codicological horizon of expectation. It provides new ways of thinking about Chaucer's access to, and use of, these Italian sources, stimulating, in turn, new ways of reading his work. This attention to the materiality of Chaucer's sources is further explored and developed by reading the Tales through their early fourteenth-century manuscripts, taking account not just of the text but also of the numerous marginal glosses. Within this context, then, the question of Chaucer's authorship of some of these glosses is considered.Less
This book breaks important new ground in the study of Chaucer's various engagements with Italian literary culture, taking a more dynamic approach to Chaucer's Italian sources than has previously been available. Most treatments of such influences do not take sufficient account of the material contexts in which these sources were available to Chaucer and his contemporaries. Manuscripts of the major works of Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch circulated in a variety of formats, and often the margins of their texts were loci for extensive commentary and glossing. These traditions of glossing and commentary represent one of the most striking features of fourteenth-century Italian literary culture. Not only that, but the authors themselves were responsible for some of this commentary material, from Dante's own prosimetra Vita nova and Convivio, to the extensive commentary accompanying Boccaccio's Teseida. The startling example of Francesco d'Amaretto Mannelli's glosses in his copy of the Decameron, copied in 1384, is discussed in detail for the first time. His refiguring of Griselda offers an important perspective on the reception of this story that is exactly contemporary with Chaucer. This book offers a new perspective on Chaucer and Italy by highlighting the materiality of his sources, reconstructing his textual, codicological horizon of expectation. It provides new ways of thinking about Chaucer's access to, and use of, these Italian sources, stimulating, in turn, new ways of reading his work. This attention to the materiality of Chaucer's sources is further explored and developed by reading the Tales through their early fourteenth-century manuscripts, taking account not just of the text but also of the numerous marginal glosses. Within this context, then, the question of Chaucer's authorship of some of these glosses is considered.
Edward I. Condren
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813032412
- eISBN:
- 9780813038339
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813032412.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
While covering all the major work produced by Geoffrey Chaucer in his pre-Canterbury Tales career, this book seeks to correct the traditional interpretations of these poems. The author provides new ...
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While covering all the major work produced by Geoffrey Chaucer in his pre-Canterbury Tales career, this book seeks to correct the traditional interpretations of these poems. The author provides new interpretations of the three “dream visions” — Book of the Duchess, Parliament of Fowls, and House of Fame — as well as Chaucer's early masterwork Troilus and Criseyde. He draws a series of portraits of Chaucer as glimpsed in his work: the fledgling poet who is seeking to master the artificial style of French love poetry, the passionate author attempting to rebut critics of his work, and, finally, the master of a naturalistic style entirely his own.Less
While covering all the major work produced by Geoffrey Chaucer in his pre-Canterbury Tales career, this book seeks to correct the traditional interpretations of these poems. The author provides new interpretations of the three “dream visions” — Book of the Duchess, Parliament of Fowls, and House of Fame — as well as Chaucer's early masterwork Troilus and Criseyde. He draws a series of portraits of Chaucer as glimpsed in his work: the fledgling poet who is seeking to master the artificial style of French love poetry, the passionate author attempting to rebut critics of his work, and, finally, the master of a naturalistic style entirely his own.
Alcuin Blamires
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199248674
- eISBN:
- 9780191714696
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199248674.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This book, mainly concentrating on the Canterbury Tales, reassesses the moral dimension in Chaucer’s writings. For the Middle Ages, the study of human behaviour was quintessentially moral. It was not ...
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This book, mainly concentrating on the Canterbury Tales, reassesses the moral dimension in Chaucer’s writings. For the Middle Ages, the study of human behaviour was quintessentially moral. It was not gender neutral: certain virtues and certain failings were explicitly or implicitly gender-specific. The book demonstrates how crucial Chaucer’s engagement is with the composite moral/ethical traditions available to him. By recourse to commonplace primary sources of the period, it is shown that Stoic ideals that had been somewhat uncomfortably absorbed within medieval Christian moral codes are invoked to complicate the poet’s representations of how women and men aspire to behave in matters of friendship and anger, sexuality and chastity, protest and sufferance, generosity and greed, and credulity and foresight. Focus on such concepts and on the networks of thought in which they are embedded yields insights both into specific interpretative issues in individual Tales, and into the concept that informs the work as a whole. Topics covered included the ethical implications of the flood-forecast and the ethical status of the heroine in the Miller’s Tale; the collision of emotion with equanimity in the Franklin’s Tale; the surprisingly positive connotations of the Wife of Bath’s allegiance to liberality, which explain the continuity between her Prologue and her Tale; and the questioning of what ought to be ‘enough’ for humanity, which suffuses the Shipman’s Tale and several others. As for the whole poem, a nuanced appraisal of ideals of fellowship and friendship is shown to be fundamental to its structure.Less
This book, mainly concentrating on the Canterbury Tales, reassesses the moral dimension in Chaucer’s writings. For the Middle Ages, the study of human behaviour was quintessentially moral. It was not gender neutral: certain virtues and certain failings were explicitly or implicitly gender-specific. The book demonstrates how crucial Chaucer’s engagement is with the composite moral/ethical traditions available to him. By recourse to commonplace primary sources of the period, it is shown that Stoic ideals that had been somewhat uncomfortably absorbed within medieval Christian moral codes are invoked to complicate the poet’s representations of how women and men aspire to behave in matters of friendship and anger, sexuality and chastity, protest and sufferance, generosity and greed, and credulity and foresight. Focus on such concepts and on the networks of thought in which they are embedded yields insights both into specific interpretative issues in individual Tales, and into the concept that informs the work as a whole. Topics covered included the ethical implications of the flood-forecast and the ethical status of the heroine in the Miller’s Tale; the collision of emotion with equanimity in the Franklin’s Tale; the surprisingly positive connotations of the Wife of Bath’s allegiance to liberality, which explain the continuity between her Prologue and her Tale; and the questioning of what ought to be ‘enough’ for humanity, which suffuses the Shipman’s Tale and several others. As for the whole poem, a nuanced appraisal of ideals of fellowship and friendship is shown to be fundamental to its structure.