European Middle Ages Research Articles

Encyclopedia of witchcraft: the Western tradition

The definitive compilation on witchcraft and witch hunting in the early modern era exploring significant people, places, beliefs, and events. Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition is the definitive reference on the age of witch hunting (approximately 1430-1750), its origins, expansion, and ultimate decline. Incorporating a wealth of recent scholarship in four richly illustrated, alphabetically organized volumes, it offers historians and general readers alike the opportunity to explore the realities behind the legends of witchcraft and witchcraft trials. Over 170 contributors from 28 nations provide vivid, documented descriptions and analyses of witchcraft trials and locations, folklore and beliefs, magical practices and deities, influential texts, and the full range of players in this extraordinary drama-witchcraft theorists and theologians; historians and authors; judges, clergy, and rulers; the accused; and their persecutors. Concentrating on Europe and the Americas in the early modern era, the work also covers relevant topics from the ancient Near East (including the Hebrew and Christian Bibles), classical antiquity, and the European Middle Ages. Over 750 A-Z signed entries More than 170 contributors include the most distinguished scholars working in the field of witchcraft studies Illustrations and artwork, including prints, drawings, paintings, and maps Extensive end-of-entry references

Postcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages: Translating Cultures ed. by Ananya Jahanara Kabir and Deanne Williams (review)

Reviews ANANYA JAHANARA KABiR and DEANNE wii.liams, eds. PostcolonialApproaches to the EuropeanMiddleAges: Translating Cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp.xii, 298. isbn: 978-0-521-8273-7. $80. The eleven essays collected in this volume cohere principally around an insight that might seem obvious in hindsight but which is no less profound for its obviousness: that postcolonial approaches to the European Middle Ages are not anachronistic, as some critics have complained, because the MiddleAgeswere, byvirtue ofthe fact that they were inaugurated by the fall ofthe Roman Empire, in fact, already postcolonial. They come after empire; indeed the very word 'colonial,' as Seth Lerer points out, derives from the Latin colonia, for the sorts of military settlements that dotted the Roman empire (79). This audacious move takes back theory for the Middle Ages, demonstrating that medievalists need not be content merely to apologize meekly for applying theory 'anachronisrically' ro their subject but, as Bruce Holsinger argues in a 2002 Speculum arricie, can confront the presenrist bias ofcontemporary theory, recognizing and building upon the literally groundbreaking work of medievalists who have always figuted (often invisibly) in the development of litetary theories, including postcolonialism. Suddenly everything old is new again; some very oldfashioned medieval scholarship begins to look quite novel. Contriburors to this volume, stripping away rhe stereotypes that have clung, like so many barnacles, to medieval studies, uncover in eveiything from the Très riches heures of the Duke de Berry, Anglo-Saxon poetry, maps, John Gower, Alexander romances, Romance philology, and Fernando de Roja readings rhar challenge 'western myths oforigins, history, identity, and temporality' (2). And yet, two questions must necessarily follow from this insight into medieval postcolonialism. The first concerns the ways in which this postcolonialism differs from that which followed the end ofEuropean empires after World War II. What balance ought we to strike between acknowledging their similarities and cataloguing their differences? Collectively, the essays tackle this question admirably, most explicitly in Ananya Jahanara Kabir's reading of British ofFicials' use ofmedieval England as an analogy for Imperial British India, a means of'translating' the colony's cultural strangeness, but it is a thread that appears in other essays as well. A second question asks how medievalists should go about uncovering the postcolonialism of the European Middle Ages and its continuing effects in modern Europe and its former colonies without appropriating and intellectualizing the language that postcolonial theory offers to make sense ofgenuine oppression. In this regard, Lerer's reading of ARTHURIANA l6.1 (2006) 105 1?6ARTHURIANA Beowulfthrough Seamus Heaney's experience of British rule in Ireland serves as a salutary reminder ofEurope's own inrernal colonizarion. Michelle Warren links the connections between Joseph Bédier's obsessions over philological origins to linguistic purity and anxieties about racial hybridity and métissage resulting from his experiences of 'republican colonialism' (218) on the island of Bourbon. Noting that, within postcolonial theory, translation often figures the asymmetrical power relations of colonization, the editors draw upon the medieval trope of transito imperii et studii as a means to connect the disparate essays in the volume. All are 'case studies of translation as the transfer of language, culture, and power' (7). Lerer's essay, for insrance, moves from an investigation of a narrow linguistic problem oftranslation—how to render in modern English the Anglo-Saxon phrase 'on fagne flor' in Beoivulf—to a meditation on what that poem's most recent translator, the Irish poet Seamus Heaney, might 'carry over' to the poem from his own postcolonial Northern Ireland. The volume is full ofsuch juxtapositions, leaps across geographical sites, temporal chasms, and disciplinary boundaries (although all but two ofthe contributors are affiliated with English departments): the translation of ancient Trojans into late medieval Turks in the visual arts (James G. Harper), for instance, or the Alexander romances' 'translation' of the static east-west binary into a more complex four part history mapped onro the four cardinal points ofthe earth (Suzanne Conklin Akbari). Material culture emerges as a significant carrier of cultural translarion in everyrhing from Anglo-Saxon spolia (materials plundered from Roman ruins and incorporated into medieval buildings), medieval maps, Roman mosaics, and French tapestries. In at least one essay...

Postcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages. Edited byAnanya Jahanara Kabir and Deanne Williams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. xii+298.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewPostcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages. Edited byAnanya Jahanara Kabir and Deanne Williams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. xii+298.Robert Allen RouseRobert Allen RouseUniversity of British Columbia Search for more articles by this author University of British ColumbiaPDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Modern Philology Volume 103, Number 4May 2006 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/509021 Views: 8Total views on this site Permission to reprint a book review printed in this section may be obtained only from the author.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Two cases of leprosy from Žatec (Bohemia), dated to the turn of the 12th century and confirmed by DNA analysis for Mycobacterium leprae

The leprosy known today primarily from tropical areas was a relatively common disease in European Middle Ages. This article describes two skeletons bearing palaeopathological indications of leprosy from a cemetery at Žatec in North-West Bohemia (Czech Republic). The archaeological context clearly shows that these individuals were buried prior to the second decade of the 12th century, and most probably in the second half of 11th century. This rules out the possibility that these individuals might have contracted the disease in connection with the Crusades, in which a Bohemian contingent under Prince Vladislav II participated from 1141 to 1142. Molecular genetic methods were applied to detect specific DNA fragments of the causative agent of leprosy, Mycobacterium leprae. The nasal concha of one individual yielded DNA that could be directly sequenced after isolation and amplification. The vertebral body of the second individual, on the other hand, did not provide DNA of sufficient quality for direct sequencing and only weak amplification was detectable. The morphological and genetic analyses both indicate that leprosy existed prior to the Crusades in medieval Bohemia, albeit that its prevalence was probably not as great as in northern or western Europe.

The Rethorica Nova of Ramon Llull: a Guide to "Speaking Well"

THE RETHORICA NOVA OF RAMON LLULL: A GUIDE TO "SPEAKING WELL" Mark Johnston DePaul Univeristy Scholarship on the literary culture of the European Middle Ages used to affirm confidendy diat die practice of eloquence was limited to diree areas—dieais dictaminis, arspoetriae, and arspraedicandi—cultivated almost exclusively by clerics and scholars, for narrowly professional purposes.1 The Classical exercise of public oratory codified by Cicero supposedly survived only as a subject for scholastic commentary in a few university curricula. Evidence for die popular practice ofeloquence seemed so limited that even as recently as 1988 an historian ofrhetoric could declare simply diat "Oratory was a lost art" in die Middle Ages.2 During die last two generations, new and extensive research on literacy, oral diluire, and popular learning has, happily, made it impossible to accept the old view that attention to eloquence survived only in chanceries, lecture halls, and pulpits.3 Evidence gadiered from many fields now shows that men and women outside die schools, the Church, or government administration also appreciated keenly the importance of, as they often called it, "speaking well" (bene loqui). An extraordinary Iberian testimony to this wider interest in eloquence is the treatise Rethorica nova (RN)4 of Ramon Llull (12321316 ). In this work, the celebrated Mallorcan lay theologian and 1 The prevailing view, certainly, in North American scholarship from Charles Sears Baldwin, Medieval Rhetoric to JamesJerome Murphy, Rhetoric in the MiddleAges . 2 Brian Vickers, In Defense ofRhetoric 227. 5 Research on the development ofcourtly culture has especially contributed to this broader knowledge: Joachim Bumke, Courtly Cuitare; C. Stephen Jaeger, The Origins of Courtliness and The Envy ofAngels; or Aldo Scaglione, Knights at Court. On the literature of "speaking well", seeJohnston, "Ciceronian Rhetoric and Ethics". 4 All references, by section and page, are to the edition byJohnston. Recent editions also include that ofJosep Batalla, Lluis Cabré y Marcel Ortin; and anotherbyJaunie Medina. La corónica 34.2 (Spring, 2006): 135-60 136Mark JohnstonLa coránica 34.2, 2006 philosopher combines advice drawn from many sources: pre¿iching, grammar, rhetoric, moral theology, courtesy and vernacular poetics. The result of this diverse confection is a comjirehensive phin for artful discourse that ultimately serves Llull's larger goal of reforming Christian society. At the saure time, it illustrates sujierkitivelv how educated laypeople like Llull were capable of synthesizing the different models of eloquence available to them, without recourse to the training provided for clerics or scholars. Lull's Rethorica nova The/t^Vis the first full-length work on eloquence from Llull's long and prolific career; he later composed other guides to preaching and various compendia ofsermon material. ' The colophon ofthe RN states that he wrote it in the vermicular (jircsumablv Catalan) while ? ¡siting Cyprus in 1301. during one of his overseas missionary excursions, although there is nothing in the work that specifically connects it to the circumstances ol his missionary activities in Cyprus: Finitus est liber isle ad dei gloriam et honorem, in quo tradit¿i est doctrina inveniendi rcthorice subiectiun et ad verba pulcra et ornata secundum artein rethorice componenda. Islum tractatuni compihivit Magister Ravniundus catehinus secundum vulgarem stillimi in insula cipri in monasterio sancii Iohannis crisostomi, Anno domini millesimo.C.C.C. primo in mense septembris. Sed eiusdem domini Anno Millesimo.C.C.C.iii. fuit in latinum translatus in Janna gloriosa vtalie civitale. Explicit rethorica nova. Deo gratias amen. (4.11; 54) The text's prologue also notes that he had long wished to write such a work; it is possible that he had composed much of it prior to 1301. I his seems especially probable because the AiV contains no reference to his controversial projiosal of speech as a sixth sense (called affatus), which he first announced in 1295 and regularly included in all his works composed after that date.6 The text's colophon further explains -' F(Jr fiill discussion of.ill Llull's theories on eloquence, see Johnston, Evangelical Rhetoric: on his sermon theories in particular, see Llius Cabré. "Homilètica lui-liana". " The origin and purpose of this unusual theorv remain subjects of considerable scholarly debate; see Johnston. "Affitius: Natural Science as Moral Theologv" and Elena Pistoiesi, "El rerefons de...

The Renaissance of Marriage in Fifteenth-Century Italy (review)

Reviewed by: The Renaissance of Marriage in Fifteenth-Century Italy Catherine Harding (bio) Anthony F. d'Elia. The Renaissance of Marriage in Fifteenth-Century ItalyHarvard University Press. xii, 262. US $49.95 This book makes an important contribution to our understanding of socio-cultural values in Renaissance court culture in Italy during the fifteenth century. The author focuses on an overlooked area of inquiry in Renaissance studies, orations given at weddings, demonstrating how these speeches addressed ideas of family lineage, political alliances, material wealth, and social status. The author's skills as a Latinist are evident throughout. His analyses of the Latin orations offer readers fascinating new insights into the circulation of ideas about rhetoric, oral and written performativity, religiosity, and political ideology in elite courtly circles. The finding-list at the close of the book will prove a useful tool for scholars who wish to delve further into this exciting material. In the first chapter of the book, the main argument is framed within a broad examination of attitudes to marriage in antiquity (texts from this era would have been especially inspirational to humanist writers), the European Middle Ages, and republican environments such as Florence and Venice. At the book's close, he returns to the wider perspective of how marriage was regarded in Reformation Germany. The decision to situate the courtly responses within this broad historical context is admirable; it provides us with a useful perspective on the diverse issues that came into focus, depending on one's religious, social or political point of view. My only criticism is that such an approach at times presents the non-courtly material as 'other,' giving the impression, for example, that we can talk about 'medieval ideas concerning marriage' in a very generalized way. Medievalists everywhere would wish for a little more caution in presenting the multiplicity of viewpoints that circulated in Europe throughout the period, from the early to late Middle Ages. For instance, Francesco da Barberino, writing c.1314 CE, may have been unusual in pre-humanist Florence, but he argued that the state of marriage offered couples the chance to achieve true union of body, mind, and soul, given the necessary moral and social training. He expressed this in visual form, showing husband and wife joined in one body. Perhaps an acknowledgment of the difficulties of presenting such a broad overview of this history would have signalled that the author was aware of the dangers of teleological arguments, although it can be necessary to offer a broad picture to locate our perspective on the past. The book is especially strong in relating the orations to rhetorical culture. Renaissance scholars made significant contributions to civic panegyric, weaving ideas of marriage and the union of man and woman together with ideas about the state and the ruler. The chapter on 'weddings as propaganda' should be required reading for undergraduate and graduate [End Page 249] students wishing to understand the art of persuasion current in Italy during the period. The author's contribution to the relationship of notions of gender and suitable marriage partners is equally fascinating. He demonstrates how at times men were considered worthy of marriage for their money, which was considered useful in times of war or for displays of princely magnificence. Not surprisingly, the usual topoi about women's sinful nature and the dangers of feminine beauty were articulated in the wedding orations. The moralized reading of external signs of beauty or ugliness offers an important insight into the profound differences that distinguish our age from the experiences of other cultures, past and present. The author's careful historical analysis makes this book essential reading for students and scholars alike. His examination of early European explorations of marriage offers a welcome contribution to the story of this institution at a pivotal moment in historical consciousness. [End Page 250] Catherine Harding Catherine Harding, Department of Fine Art, University of Victoria Copyright © 2006 University of Toronto Press Incorporated

"The physician as poet" review of: Pereira, Peter Saying the World

Peter Pereira is a family physician and a poet. I weave excerpts from Dr. Pereira's poems into a brief history of medicine's mythological and historical roots, beginning with the Egyptian god Thoth, and the Greek physician Hippocrates. Along the way, I touch on the European Middle Ages and the Islamic World. Finally, I quote poet-critic T.S. Eliot, who was an early influence on Dr. Pereira's decision to become a poet, and contemporary physician-poets Rafael Campo and William Carlos Williams. I end by placing Dr. Pereira, whose practice is oriented toward immigrant families, in his indigenous Pacific Northwest, arguing that being both physician and poet helps Pereira to live in a world that is both intimately human and naturally impersonal.

Postcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages: Translating Cultures ed. by Ananya Jahanara Kabir, Deanne Williams (review)

Postcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages: Translating Cultures ed. by Ananya Jahanara Kabir, Deanne Williams (review)

Pall of Orthodoxy?

THIS MONTH we will examine two cases center on extent to which religion may influence teaching, one illustrating influence from outside classroom and other from inside. CASE I In 1995, after teaching social studies and then language arts in middle school for several years, Gary Cole began to teach seventhgrade social studies in a school district in northern Maine. According to Cole,1 first two years went well; district's curriculum coordinator, Pamela Hallett, complimented him on his course, which covered history, culture, and religion of Europe and Asia. With her permission, he used textbook Human Heritage to teach his course, rather than outdated Europe and Soviet Union. Hallett met with Cole and Kevin Sipe, seventh-grade social studies teacher at district's other middle school, to review Maine Learning Results requirements and found that, while Cole was fully implementing requirements, Sipe was not even coming close. Hallett recommended Sipe meet with Cole to work out how to follow Cole's example. In early September, however, at his school's open house, parent of one of Cole's students confronted him, angrily expressing opposition to the religious aspects of topics Cole covered. The parent followed up a few days later with a visit to Cole's class, where she observed him mention Cro-Magnon man is at least 40,000 years old. Seeing parent's agitation, Cole met with her after class, whereupon she emphatically explained she believes every word of Bible is true, including claim Earth is probably 8,000 to 10,000 years old. She left and went directly to principal's office, withdrawing her son from Cole's class. Her sister, who also had a child in Cole's class, also spoke with him, objecting to that old ... ancient history and stuff. Cole understood stuff to refer to religion; for example, sister explained she only let her daughter be exposed to his teaching of evolution because her daughter's faith was strong. The two objecting parents were granddaughters of Rev. Blackstone, who was minister at a local church where thenchair of district's board of education was a member. Years earlier, former principal of middle school had told Cole people at church think they can run school. In mid-September, Hallett sent Cole a note notifying him of an upcoming meeting at high school to discuss changes in seventh-grade social studies curriculum. At meeting, she told Cole teacher of ninth-grade world history had complained that, when they entered high school, his students had already covered what she was going to teach, whereas students from other middle school had not. Based on this complaint, Hallett stated Cole should no longer teach about Asian history or ancient Greece. She further directed him to use as course text Europe and Soviet Union, rather than Human Heritage, to facilitate district-wide coordination. Shortly after meeting, Cole went to superintendent for clarification as to what material he should cover. For example, he understood Hallett to tell him to teach history of Europe, but not Middle Ages in Europe or any history from ninth-grade curriculum, which included European history. Pointing out directives conflicted with Maine Learning Results and they were issued in wake of two sisters' complaints, Cole suggested district was letting church run district. The superintendent did not seem to deny these accusations. On November 3, Cole wrote to Hallett for guidance, but she did not respond. At start of 1998-99 school year, Cole wrote to Hallett to summarize what he had understood to be agreement resulting from a meeting she had held with him and Sipe on implementation of Maine Learning Results, but she did not respond to his request for confirmation. …

The Humble Sage and the Wandering Madman: Madness and Madmen in an Exemplum from Sefer Hasidim

Notwithstanding its, at times, notably pietistic nature, Sefer Hasidim (henceforth SH)1 provides modern scholars with a glimpse of the mindset, mentality, and culture of medieval Ashkenazi Jewry. In his insightful and fundamental study of this work, Ivan Marcus characterizes its role as follows: Like Caesarius of Heisterbach's Dialogus Miraculorum, Sefer Hasidim is a speculum of the society in which it originated. It contains allusions to knights and demons, princes and prices, grain profiteering, monastic practices, tensions in communal politics, Jewish-Christian debates, conversion in both directions, coin clipping, sexual promiscuity, local customs, women's occupations in weaving and money lending, and a variety of other facts of medieval culture and life in medieval Germany.2 Missing from this cogent observation is SH's treatment of madness. Bearing in mind its role as a source for social attitudes, I wish to take a fresh look at one of the more than four hundred exempla found in SH. This exemplum is pertinent to the study of madness in medieval European Jewish society. Its story illumines questions of madness, marginality, insanity's [End Page 38] social aspects, and how madmen were perceived and treated by medieval European society at large and by its Jewish minority.3 Before proceeding to the exemplum itself, some preliminary remarks about madness and the insane in the European Middle Ages are in order. From antiquity through the Early Modern period, abnormal or insane behavior was often linked to demonic possession. Demons were thought to torment the possessed, thus relieving these individuals of legal responsibility for their actions. Some medieval cures for possession and madness utilized physical violence, seeking to discomfort and thereby "drive out" the demons. These "cures" legitimized abuse and torture. The English mystic Margery Kempe—herself at first thought to be mad—speaks of a madwoman she was asked to heal. Confined in chains to a small chamber on the outskirts of the English town of Kings Lynn because of her unbearable yelling, this woman was pushed to the margins because "most people would not suffer her to dwell among them."4 In late medieval Germany there was even a specific term for chambers used for locking up madmen: Tollkisten (cages for the mad).5 Insane individuals were classified according to two distinct categories: harmless and raving.6 The harmless, peaceable, though at times boisterously [End Page 39] merry fools were left to wander about the public sphere in relative freedom, collecting alms and charity. Judith Neaman described the common medieval nonviolent variety as "barefoot and breadless beggars."7 Recently, James Brodman noted in his study of sick care in medieval Iberia that "people whose behavior we would now characterize as disturbed were not differentiated from the run of beggars until the 14th century, when society began to sort the poor into various categories."8 The American cultural historian Sander Gilman points out that harmless madmen were represented both in literature and in the visual arts as part of the world of children, as being of "lesser mind" than normal adults.9 The raving mad, on the other hand, were considered a menace, a threat both to themselves and to society. Physical as well as textual evidence points to the segregation and imprisonment of these individuals, and even to their grave mistreatment.10 That a "code of mad behavior" existed both [End Page 40] in antiquity and in medieval Europe is evident from the fact that the sane could in extreme cases adopt this code and convincingly impersonate madness.11 With these observations in mind let us now turn to the exemplum from SH about "The Humble Sage." A man was captive in a far away land. He said to himself, "How shall I set about12 observing the Sabbath," and he decided to feign madness. Children jested with him and gave him bread. On the Sabbath he...

Managing water resources past and present

A multi-disciplinary analysis of the evolution of water politics and policy by an international team of distinguished experts. Water management in the Middle Ages in Europe, its evolution in the USA, the elaboration of the European Water Framework Directive, the British experience of water management, the over-exploitation of African aquifers, and the evolution of the water situation in Southern Africa are all examined. This volume underlines the fact that only an integrative and interdisciplinary understanding can lead to genuinely improved water management practices that will not benefit some social groups at the expense of others.

Postcolonial approaches to the European Middle Ages: translating cultures

Part I. Introduction: 1. A return to wonder Ananya Jahanara Kabir and Deanne Williams Part II. The Afterlife of Rome: 2. Anglo-Saxon England and the postcolonial void Nicholas Howe 3. Mapping the ends of Empire Alfred Hiatt 4. 'On Fagne Flor': the post-colonial Beowulf, from Heorot to Heaney Seth Lerer Part III. Orientalism Before 1600: 5. Alexander in the Orient: bodies and boundaries in the Roman de toute chevalerie Suzanne Conklin Akbari 6. Gower's monster Deanne Williams 7. Turks as Trojans, Trojans as Turks: visual imagery of the Trojan War and the politics of cultural identity in fifteenth-century Europe James Harper Part IV. Memory and Nostalgia: 8. Analogy in translation: Imperial Rome, medieval England and British India Ananya Jahanara Kabir 9. 'Au commencement etait l'ile': the colonial formation of Joseph Bedier's Chanson de Roland Michelle R. Warren 10. The protocolonial baroque of La Celestina Roland Greene Epilogue: translations and transnationals: pre- and postcolonial Ato Quayson.

Death-Devoted Heart: Sex and the Sacred in Wagner's Tristan and Isolde (review)

Death-Devoted Heart: Sex and Sacred in Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. By Roger Scruton. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. [vi, 238 p. ISBN 0-19-516691-4. $25.] Bibliography, index. Wagner's music dramas famously, and problematically, are meant issue in redemption, whether it be that of central characters (the Flying Dutchman, Tannhauser, Amfortas, Kundry, or Parsifal), whole fictional society or world represented in drama (the Ring cycle), or, more fundamentally, audience itself. What exactly, outside of any concrete theological doctrine, is be understood by such is difficult determine. For audience of these or any similarly ambitious works of it could best be regarded as kind of broadly spiritual benediction such art is capable of conveying: an enhanced perspective quality of human being-in-the-world, a finer awareness of emotional, moral, and psychological negotiations that constitute our lives. In pondering manifestations of sex (or erotic love) and sacred in Tristan und Isolde, Roger Scruton attempts ground lofty claims of Wagnerian music drama such redemptive power in a more detailed argument about how art (and specifically Wagner's art) might reinvest modern life with experience of sense of a re-sacralized world beyond or after hegemony of any traditional religious belief-system. The ambition is very much in tune with that voiced by Wagner himself with regard his mature oeuvre. How persuasively it might be realized for modern-day audience (or reader) in specific case of Tristan und Isolde would be measure of success of Scruton's deeply felt enterprise. Wagner's music dramas all trade in currency of sacred, Scruton maintains (p. 7), and much of his effort is devoted tracing circulation of their sacred themes back pre-Christian origins, through European middle ages, and into other world religions and cultures (ancient Greece remaining always close hand). For Scruton, as for Wagner himself, a great potential of music drama is that of preserving and renewing functions of religion and ritual in modern era. This can be located in characteristic focus of Wagner's dramas on acts of sacrifice, sacred loves, and sacrilege done love by faithlessness and forgetting. They involve intense moments of consecration, in which is both courted and spurned. And their premodern setting acquaints us with a world in which rituals, oaths, and acts of heroic sacrifice are in no way seen as intrusions into human normality but are taken for granted, as windows in empirical world that look out transcendental, (p. 8) By contrast, modern world of Wagner's own day, and all more our own, suffers from a fatal disenchantment which his operas, so Scruton (like Wagner) believes, have power counteract. Their revitalization of religious myths, sacraments, heroic sacrifice, and idealized love (revitalized above all by means of a wholly modern musical language) can help us to understand what redemption could mean when detached from every promise of a life after death (p. 14), traditional promise of religion, and re-sacralize our understanding of world and our selves in it in a newly viable way. The agenda is that of nineteenth-century Kunstreligion or the religion of art, a concept Scruton does not invoke directly, although his arguments are all essentially founded it. The book's seven chapters enclose, in chapters 2 through 4, what is essentially a traditional-though always eloquent and well-informed-critical introduction opera, glossing drama's medieval legendary and literary sources (chapter 2), nature of Wagner's musical-dramatic adaptation (chapter 3) and an extensive discussion of challenging, intensely expressive compositional idiom of Tristan und Isolde (chapter 4). …

Instabilità testuale e dialogo interculturale: riflessioni sulla traduzione della Gautreks saga

Within the theoretical framework which characterizes the interdisciplinary approach of Translation Studies, much attention has been devoted to the analysis of translators’ statements about their own works. In the case of a translation of a medieval text, the translator is necessarily faced with a set of problems linked with some major features of the production and transmission of texts in the European Middle Ages. This paper aims to offer some reflections about the translation of the Old Icelandic Gautreks saga into Italian: in particular, the translator will try to highlight the relationships between the adopted translation strategy and the different kinds of influence exerted both on the translation process and its final result by a variety of aspects of the target culture into which the translated text is intended to be received.

Die Heidin: A Late-Medieval Experiment in Cultural Rapprochement between Christians and Saracens

AbstractWhereas recent scholarship has primarily focused on the hostile attitudes against the Orient espoused by writers in the European Middle Ages, a number of intriguing narratives also indicate surprising open-minded attitudes. These might reflect utopian fantasies, but they still project noteworthy "tolerant" relationships between Christians and "heathens." This paper examines one of these narratives, the Middle High German Die Heidin (late thirteenth century), where courtly love and 'domestic violence' counterbalance each other, instigating the heathen protagonist to flee with her Christian suitor back to his country because her erstwhile loving husband (heathen) had turned toward brutal behavior. This narrative indicates how little European audiences obviously cared about religious and racial conflicts and subsumed them under the much more fascinating discourse on love.

Searching High and Lo: Unholy Quests for Lolita

is that most American of tales, a travel narrative. Maps, motels, tourist traps, and scenic viewpoints fill the novel, while issues of displacement and movement drive the narrative as a whole. Yet is more than a simple recounting of Humbert Humbert's travel fetish: this American journey is the final stage in a pilgrimage, a heroic quest of sorts. By casting Humbert's murder confession as a travel journal, Nabokov is able to chart Humbert's movements through time and space as a lifelong ritual of devotion. Humbert crosses Europe, the Atlantic, and America on an unholy quest for his child ideal. Both the comedy and the pathos of come from Nabokov's treatment of that pilgrimage. In its interwoven structure, language, and most of all in its subject, follows the pattern of a quest narrative, moving toward, circling, and moving away from the nymphet at its center. That very object of desire, of course, dooms the quest from the beginning. Young Dolores Haze is a flawed idol: she is 12 years old, four feet ten in one sock (9) and related to Humbert by marriage. She has an agenda and itinerary all her own, which add both sorrow and slapstick to this pilgrimage. While his murder confession seems to follow the pattern of the knight's crusade, Humbert's unique obsessions transform his wanderlust into an unholy quest for his nymphet grail. Given that this is a pilgrim's story, the central motif of can only be travel. Humbert's chaotic, confused, and circuitous tale employs the devices and desires of the quest narrative both to invoke and to guard against the nymphet at its heart. From John Ray Jr.'s preambulatory preface to Vladimir Nabokov's postpartum essay On a Book Entitled circumambulation and interruption move the narrative by fits and starts through Humbert's case history. (1) opening passage of Humbert's confession (the novel proper, so to speak) establishes this trope of movement. By using a nearly palindromic structure, Humbert is able to voyage round his nymphet in one short paragraph: Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee- ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lee. Ta. (9) While most readers linger over the luxuriously alliterative opening lines, Humbert's true message lies in the syncopated hopscotch of the second half of the paragraph. From Lolita to Lo. Lee.Ta.--from the annunciatory Lo across the medial lees to a Ta of farewell, the novel is writ small in this ringing invocation. Such circuitry follows the geometry of classical journey narratives: the hero's cycle, Dante's helical inferno, the symmetry of and return, and so forth. (2) It also presents the first (and last) of Humbert's ritual circumambulations of his idol. In such repetitions, Humbert sanctifies his quest. As the passing references in the preface to the deaths of all of the major characters establish, the narrative is one that finds its end in its beginning and vice versa. feminine mystique Humbert casts his lifelong journey in the form of a grail quest, a crusade for his nymphet ideal. Structurally, quest and pilgrimage narratives fall into a conveniently Aristotelian tripartite sequence of call to action, journey, and return. Norma Lorre Goodrich explains that the paradigmatic grail quest is an of mystique, focused in equal parts on mystery and veneration (xxiii). In the literature of the European middle ages the grail quest or pilgrimage is often focused on a woman, (3) whether she be Mary, mother of God, or Guinevere, idol of the idylls. engagement of pilgrims with a blessed feminine raises complex questions of divine and human love, and within Christian Europe gave rise to both the courtly love tradition and the spiritual tourist trade. (4) Novel theorist Oliver Lovesy traces such questing from the tradition of knight- or saint-errantry to the delusional Quixote: The journey of the Cervantean Quixote is an aestheticized religious quest transmogrified in the knight's imagination into a refined erotic adventure (375). …

:A History of Reading

Steven Roger Fischer's fascinating book traces the complete story of reading from the time when symbol first became sign through to the electronic texts of the present day. Describing ancient forms of reading and the various modes that were necessary to read different writing systems and scripts, Fischer turns to Asia and the Americas and discusses the forms and developments of completely divergent dimensions of reading. With the Middle Ages in Europe and the Middle East, innovative re-inventions of reading emerged - silent and liturgical reading; the custom of lectors; reading's focus in general education - whereupon printing transformed society's entire attitude to reading. Fischer charts the explosion of the book trade in this era, its increased audience and radically changed subject-matter; describes the emergence of broadsheets, newspapers and public readings; and traces the effect of new font designs on general legibility. Fischer discusses society's dedication to public literacy in the sweeping educational reforms of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and notes the appearance of free libraries, gender differences in reading matter, public advertising and the 'forbidden' lists of Church, State and the unemancipated. Finally, he assesses the future, in which it is likely that read communication will soon exceed oral communication through the use of the personal computer and the internet, and looks at 'visual language' and modern theories of how reading is processed in the human brain. Asking how the New Reader can reshape reading's future, he suggests a radical new definition of what reading could be.

Medieval Worlds: A Sourcebook edited by Roberta Anderson and Dominic Aidan Bellenger (review)

Reviews ROBERrA Anderson and Dominic AiDAN bellenger, eds., Medieval Worlds: A Sourcebook. London: Routledge, 2003. Pp. xx, 328. isbn:o-415-25309-8 (pbk). $29.95. This anthology contains a variety ofexcerpts from medieval sources, ranging from charters and monastic documents to literary texts and travel narratives. The editors' objectives are to provide 'an introduction to the period which goes far beyond conventional medieval history'(Preface) and to 'convey the depth of the medieval achievement: its faith, its structures, its ideas, its magnificence and folly, the lives of its people' (2). Anderson is a lecturer in the School ofHistorical and Cultural Studies at Bath Spa University College; Bellenger, also an historian, is Prior of Downside Abbey in Somerset. The book is the product of a team-taught medieval history course at BSUC. The collection is sorted into twelve major divisions, each representing a particular aspect of the Middle Ages: The first section, 'Introduction to medieval worlds,' is followed by 'The monastic world,' 'The world of the papacy,' 'The world of the Crusades,' 'The world of the feudal kingdom,' 'The English political world,' 'The world of the outsider,' 'The world ofwomen,' 'The world ofthe mind,' 'The world ofthe countryside,' 'The world ofthe town,' and 'The medieval world self-observed.' Each ofthese divisions concludes with a brieflist ofsuggestions for 'Further reading.' In addition to the documents themselves and the standard apparatus (contents, bibliography, and index), the volume also features a useful glossary of medieval terms, with 78 entries from 'Abbot' to 'Villein,' thirty illustrations, a handsome photographic sequence of Wells Cathedral. The discursive matter is minimal, consisting in a three-paragraph Preface, a two-page Introduction, brief contextualizing head-matter for each of the larger divisions, and even briefer commentary preceding the documents themselves. As the collection clearly targets undergraduate history students (and their instructors), it is not surprising that only eight of approximately 160 excerpts are taken from literary sources: Langland, the Chanson de Roland, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Malory, Chaucer, Gower, Christine de Pizan, and Boccaccio. The literary selections range in length from a generous dollop of Langland (the first 230 lines ofPiers) to a mere squib ofChaucer, the thirteen-line portrait ofthe plowman from the General Prologue. Excerpts from Malory appear in two different sections. At first glance, the volume would seem—with its inclusion of major rubrics for town and country and its two chapters on marginalized populations (women and 'the outsider')— to fulfill the editorial promise of cultural multivalence. Despite these gestures, however, the anthology is actually rather conservative in its ARTHURIANA ?4.4 (2??4) 75 76ARTHURIANA representation of the European Middle Ages, even a tad retrograde: the dominant voice throughout is that of the patriarch and the churchman. All but two of the eleven selections in the introductory section, for example, arc connected in some way to matters Christian and theological: even the excerpt from Malory, the narrative of Galahad's Grail experience (Caxton 17, clxxi-cxcvii), reflects this thematic. And parsing the contents, one cannot help but observe that the first three ofthe 'worlds' are those of the monastery, the papacy, and the Crusades. Nowhere is this spin more evident than in the chapters on marginalized groups. The only secular entry amongst twelve pieces in 'The world ofwomen' is an excerpt from Christine's Citédes dames. Additionally, Christine is one ofonly three women represented in this section (the other two non-patriarchal documents arc 'The Testament ofSt. Clare' and Radegund's 'Letter of Foundation). For the remainder, the usual suspects are assembled: Jerome, Anselm, Augustine, and Abelard amongst them. The section begins with the Biblical account of Eve's fall, and the Virgin Mary figures prominently thereafter. Similarly, only two of the thirteen 'outsider' excerpts are ofsecular provenance. Three documents represent what Christians have to say about the Jews, particularly their causal connection to the Black Death, but no Jewish voice is heard. Lepers and witches comprise the other two 'outsider' groups here—the Islamic Other is not even mentioned, surely a necessary antidote to the casual demonization of 'Saracens' in other sections of the anthology. (The only Islamic voice in the entire collection is that ofUsmah ibn Munquidh, ironically 'An...

Mapping Cosmopolis: Moral Topographies of the Medieval City

Cosmopolis is a concept that has a long history in many cultures around the globe. It is a mirroring of the ‘social’ and ‘natural’ worlds, such that in one is seen the order and the structures of the other—a mutual ‘mapping’. In this paper I examine how the presence of cosmopolis—a Christianised cosmopolis of the European Middle Ages—was made evident in the representation and formation of cities at that time. I reveal a dualism between the social and spatial ordering of both city and cosmos which defined and reinforced social and spatial boundaries in urban landscapes, evident for example in the 11th and 12th centuries. Recently, Toulmin (1992) has taken the idea of cosmopolis to argue that it has been a persistent presence in Western-Enlightenment science, philosophy, and religion—a ‘hidden agenda of modernity’. I contend that, as an idea, cosmopolis has a much earlier circulation in European thinking, not least in the Middle Ages. Locating cosmopolis in the medieval and the modern periods then begs a question of what is it that really makes the two distinct and separate? All too often human geographers have emphasised discontinuities between the ‘medieval’ and ‘modern’ age, locating the ‘rise of modernity’ some time in the Enlightenment period. However, what ‘mapping’ cosmopolis reveals are continuities, binding time and space together, which when looked at begin to help query the modernity concept itself.

Gutenberg revisité

Cette étude examine à l’aune de la théorie économique de l’innovation la naissance de l’imprimerie. Les principaux résultats sont les suivants. L’invention de l’imprimerie à caractères mobiles par Gutenberg est suscitée par l’expansion de la demande d’écrits à la fin du Moyen Age européen (demand pull). Il s’agit d’une invention par recombinaison de techniques préexistantes. La persistance d’une technologie inférieure (la xylographie) en Chine durant plusieurs siècles provient de coûts de transition élevés induisant une dépendance au sentier. L’invention est développée dans le cadre d’un montage entrepreneurial et financier similaire au capital risque actuel, limitant les problèmes d’agence dans un contexte d’information asymétrique et de risque élevé. Le partage des bénéfices de la nouvelle industrie entre les imprimeurs et les libraires est déterminé par le contrôle des ressources rares, notamment l’accès à la demande, plus que par la technologie qui n’est pas protégée légalement.