Medieval Culture Research Articles

Vernacular Multilingualism. The use of French in Medieval Dutch Literature

Recently new attention has been paid to the presence and use of French outside of France in multilingual regions, one of them being the Southern Low Countries. Scholarship focusing on this area has emphasized the presence of French within the Dutch literary culture as well as studied the language attitude of Dutch authors towards French. This article adds a third focus to this scholarship, namely that of the use of French found within multilingual texts from the Southern Low Countries. Through an analysis of a selection of bilingual and trilingual texts, it is determined how French is incorporated in these texts, what functionality it serves and to what extent this function reflects or contradicts findings from the other two views on French in medieval Dutch literary culture.

Chronological complexes of Medieval sites in Western Siberia

Recently, an opinion has been established about the broad chronology of the medieval cultures in the study of the Middle Ages of the Trans-Urals. Particularly, the period of existence of the Bakal Culture has been consi-dered to fit within the framework of the 4th–13th centuries, and the Yudino Culture within the 6th–13th centuries. Based on the general chronology of the archaeological sites, as well as discovery of materials of different cultures within the same settlements, the researchers suggested a certain level of interaction between representatives of the Bakal and Yudino Cultures. Such ethno-cultural situation probably had to be accompanied by economic, so-cial or military aspects of the interaction of the medieval communities. However, we cannot readily accept the co-existence of representatives of the Bakal and Yudino Cultures, since no multicultural burial complexes have been found and no syncretic has been observed in the material culture. Thus, one of the main objectives was to detail the chronology of the medieval complexes and to identify the chronological phases. To address this problem, we have assessed all known dated archaeological sites of the medieval period, examined by stationary excavations and subjected to absolute and relative dating, 36 sites in total. Using the comparative typological method, an at-tempt was made to narrow the chronological framework of material complexes for each site. All radiocarbon dates have been calibrated using OxCal 4.3 program and IntCal13 calibration curve with a confidence interval 95,4 %, and 68,3 %. The absolute dates were then correlated with the relative dates. As a result, two chronological peri-ods were defined: 4th–8th and 9th–13th centuries. The first period correlates with the period of existence of the Bakal Culture. The later dates, obtained from the few single-layer sites of the Bakal type, are not supported by the material complexes and the presence of burial grounds of this time. Archaeological sites of the Yudino Culture appeared in the territory of Trans-Urals in the 9th century. This has been reliably confirmed by the appearance of single-layer settlements and monocultural necropolises dating to the developed medieval period. In summary, we conclude that the chronology of the Medieval cultures of the Trans-Urals does not overlap, and the analysis of microstratigraphy of the majority of settlement complexes allows observing the gradual replacement of some cul-tural groups by others.

The vitality of the dead in medieval cultures

ABSTRACT This article provides an overview of the current state of research into the dead and undead in the European Middle Ages. Looking at the theoretical frameworks that underpin modern scholarship on the topic, as well the key publications that have steered academic investigations on death and dying into exciting new arenas, this introduction highlights the myriad ways in which the traumas of death were conceptualised in pre-modern textual traditions.

Utopian and Dystopian Themes in Tolkien’s Legendarium

Utopian and Dystopian Themes in Tolkien’s Legendarium

Intermediality in medieval Iberian manuscript cultures: methodological reflections on ongoing and future research

ABSTRACT This introductory article offers an in-depth discussion of the special issue’s overall theme, as well as summaries of the individual contributions and a reflection on how digital tools are reshaping research. The first section covers the recent flourishing of large-scale digitization projects along with advances in material sciences and in a range of scholarly disciplines including paleography and codicology, art history, musicology, literary studies, and conservation and restoration, all of which have explored previously unimaginable possibilities for the study of medieval manuscripts. The second section focuses on the articles gathered for the special issue: those helping to create a theoretical framework, those presenting the results of recent projects, and a group of case studies that reveal how scholars are gradually adopting digital technologies and material studies as essential research tools. The third and final section suggests new avenues of investigation and methodological approaches to promote and improve our current understanding of Iberian manuscript materiality.

ՇԻԿԱՀՈՂԻ Ս. ՍՏԵՓԱՆՈՍ ՆԱԽԱՎԿԱ ԵԿԵՂԵՑՈՒ ՊԵՂՈՒՄՆԵՐԻ ԱՐԴՅՈՒՆՔՆԵՐԸ / THE EXCAVATIONS RESULTS OF THE CHURCH OF ST. STEPANOS OF SHIKAHOGH

Shikahogh is a village in the Syunik region of RA, in the subarea of Kapan situated on the 22nd km of the Kapan-Meghri highway. The village and its surrounding area are full of archaeological and historical-architectural monuments. The church of St. Stepanos the Nakhavka (Forefather) and its southern cemetery are the first to excel among those monuments. Unfortunately, the church doesn't have a construction record where the construction date would have been mentioned but taking into account its architectural features the church can be dated back to the 17th century the earliest. In 2012 the organization "Land and culture" (president G. Gevonyan) came up with a program according to which it was planned to reconstruct the church of St. Stepanos the Nakhavka of Shikahogh and to improve its surrounding territories. In the same year the church was fully measured, the surrounding area was mapped by architects S. Nalbandyan and A. Badishyan after which a description of the technical condition and seismic conclusion were drawn. Based on the letter-application of the initiative side addressed to "Historical and cultural heritage research center" (director H. Simonyan) an expedition was formed (head of expedition A. Nalbandyan) which gave a start to a new and thorough phase in the research process of the church of Shikahogh. The excavations were carried out in 2013 and the church's base and the floor were found in 1 month. The medieval cultural layer was studied and a lot of discoveries were made. The list of artifacts covered a wide layer of medieval culture: gravestones, glazed and nonglazed pottery, construction pottery, metallic objects, etc. Especially noteworthy are the clay lampshade, the head of a bobbin, the iron dragger and the church bronze musical instrument-"bell". The excavations became the basis for the reconstruction of the church which was carried out by the initiative of the organization "Land and culture" in 2014 – 2016.

Continental England: Form, Translation, and Chaucer in the Hundred Years' War by Elizaveta Strakhov

Reviewed by: Continental England: Form, Translation, and Chaucer in the Hundred Years' War by Elizaveta Strakhov Rory G. Critten Elizaveta Strakhov. Continental England: Form, Translation, and Chaucer in the Hundred Years' War. Interventions: New Studies in Medieval Culture. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2022. Pp. ix, 252. $99.95 cloth; $49.95 e-book. Elizaveta Strakhov's ambitious new study is a welcome addition to the burgeoning scholarship on England's continental connections that follows upon Ardis Butterfield's Familiar Enemy (2009). One of the achievements of that book was to raise into suspension a set of arguments that previous writers had chosen between—for example, that French was either for the French (continental French) or the English (Anglo-Norman). In contrast, Continental England sets out to prove a thesis. Strakhov argues that while the Hundred Years War threatened to tear apart the northwest corner of Europe, a group of poets was intent on repairing the damage wrought by fostering a shared repertory of poetic forms, the formes fixes lyrics. This focus on form, as opposed to language, allows Strakhov to trace a series of relationships running between England and the Continent long after the adoption of English by Chaucer and the poets writing in his wake. The [End Page 429] resulting arguments are extensive in their geographical as well as their chronological scope, taking in texts written in France, England, and Italy. Strakhov treads this ground with confidence in a book that impresses as much by the optimism of its outlook as by its philological acumen and the originality of its readings. Strakhov develops her argument over five chapters. Chapter 1 sets the scene by highlighting the community-forming function of lyric exchange as well as the interest in the minute codification of the formes fixes that is expressed in manuscript anthologies and poetic treatises. Chapter 2 affords special attention to debates regarding the uses of the classical past in a broader discussion of the integrity of the francophone cultural arena. In a set of poems that will be familiar to Butterfield's readers, Strakhov shows that Philippe de Vitry warns against a breakdown in communications as the result of diversions from standard mythography, whereas Jean de le Mote presents creative engagement with this inheritance as the condition of its survival. Strakhov's focus on classical reception in a book about form is licensed by the attention devoted to mythological elements in the repertories of formes fixes lyrics discussed in Chapter 1. The book's remaining chapters focus on writing within England. Chapter 3 addresses the propensity of Chaucer's poetry to repair connections between England and the Continent by continuing continental traditions in English. Strakhov argues that this is the hope underpinning both Deschamps's famous ballade to Chaucer and the F-Prologue to The Legend of Good Women. Chapter 4 contrasts the strategies of lyric compilation deployed by Gower and Hoccleve. Whereas Gower's retellings of popular myth in his Traitié pour essampler les amantz marietz constitutes a lesson on the slippery relations between French and Latin and text and gloss, in his holograph paratexts, Hoccleve aligns his mastery of French forms with Henry V's progressive mastery of France. Finally, Chapter 5 considers the French atmosphere of Chaucer's reception in the fifteenth century. Special attention is afforded to Shirley's deliberate presentation of the poet via paratexts as a French translator; Lydgate's French debts also come in for consideration as Strakhov demonstrates the role of French as the intermediary language giving the monk of Bury access to Italian humanist thought. Much more is going on in Continental England than these summaries can capture. The arguments that subtend the book's thesis are wideranging and introduce readers to connections between multiple texts and [End Page 430] languages. Vitry critiques de le Mote in terms that Petrarch uses to critique Vitry (in Chapter 2) and Deschamps praises Chaucer in terms that Deschamps also uses for Machaut, while Chaucer praises Petrarch in the terms that Deschamps had used to praise the English poet (in Chapter 3). There are also skillful renditions of overlooked backgrounds to later medieval English literature that subsequent researchers will find suggestive...

Germans and Poles in the Middle Ages: The Perception of the ‘Other’ and the Presence of Mutual Ethnic Stereotypes in Medieval Narrative Sources, ed. Andrzej Pleszczyński and Grischa Vercamer. Explorations in Medieval Culture, 16. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2021, xxv, 433 pp., 2 maps.

Abstract Much too often we use the modern term ‘the Other’ with respect only to monsters or non-white people in the Middle Ages. ‘Others,’ however, often appear and determine our epistemological framework both then and today. Only difference, as Ferdinand de Saussure had taught us, makes it possible to comprehend the value of an entity in contrast to the context. Similarly, the perception of other people, especially neighbors (Germans vs. Poles, vs. Czechs, Danes, etc.) mattered greatly already in the Middle Ages, which was the topic of a conference held in Warsaw from May 24 to 27, 2018. The present volume contains the proceedings, which are divided into five parts: 1. zones of contacts across Europe; 2. Polish views of Germans; 3. German views of Poles; 4. regional zones of contacts between Poles and Germans; and 5. German-Polish stereotypes in modern times as a counter-image to the medieval conditions.

Translation Effects: Language, Time, and Community in Medieval England by Mary Kate Hurley

Reviewed by: Translation Effects: Language, Time, and Community in Medieval England by Mary Kate Hurley Georgina Pitt Hurley, Mary Kate, Translation Effects: Language, Time, and Community in Medieval England (Interventions: New Studies in Medieval Culture), Columbus, The Ohio State University Press, 2021; hardcover; pp. 226; R.R.P. US$99.95 ISBN 9780814214718. ‘Translation effects’ is the term Mary Kate Hurley uses to characterize the observable traces of the translation process in medieval texts. Translation effects may lend authority to a translated work or imply cultural continuity across discrete peoples. The central premise of her argument is that the process of translation acts as a bridge between the original audience of the source text and the audience of the translated text, connecting old and new communities. The focus is not localized groups—but rather on communities anticipated within the translated text itself. The connections between these virtual or imagined communities could be deployed as powerful identity markers for the audience of the translated text. [End Page 248] Hurley argues that translation is inherently an act of interpretation. She suggests that: ‘if we approach translations as a negotiated series of interactions between humans and texts, we can better understand their temporal, textual, and community-oriented interests’ (p. 7). Hurley develops her argument in three stages. She examines literal translation in the Old English Orosius and Ælfric’s Lives of the Saints, demonstrating how these texts expanded their imagined communities temporally and spatially. She traces the manuscript tradition of texts straddling the Norman Conquest (Ælfric’s homilies and the ‘Life of Constance’ in works by Nicholas Trevet, Geoffrey Chaucer, and John Gower) to show how pre-Conquest texts were used post-Conquest to shape views of the past that facilitated emerging narratives of community in Middle English. In the final section, the focus returns to Old English: Hurley uses Beowulf to illuminate the role of narrative transmission in the construction of community within a text. Hurley’s work draws upon established scholarship on the complex nature of medieval translation by scholars such as Robert Stanton, Nicole Guenther Discenza, and Rebecca Stephenson. The analysis of Beowulf expands her argument beyond the traditional conception of translation as a movement between two texts, an identified source text and a version in a different (in this period, often vernacular) language. Hurley argues that Beowulf partakes of much of the same cultural logic as traditional translations. In Beowulf, metaphorical translation is used as a self-positioning device. The way that communities coalesce and disintegrate are demonstrated and explained through the telling and retelling of stories. In making her argument, Hurley explicitly departs from the position that medieval translators conceived of translations as a narrow form of linguistic transfer, essentially a paraphrase; or that their audiences expected the translator to remain invisible and neutral, a mere conduit. Elements of refashioning within a translated text may not be aberrations, attributable to scribal ineptitude. They may be deliberate and important expressions of the cultural values and aspirations of the community in which the translated text was intended to circulate. While Hurley’s case studies are of English texts, her argument has interesting implications for scholarly research into identity formation in a variety of communities and contexts across the medieval period. This is a well-written, easily absorbed text. It does not claim to be a comprehensive survey of medieval translations, nor to articulate a universal theory of translation applicable to the period. It offers a methodology for examining translations that is apt to bring into sharp focus the wider contemporary concerns of both translator and audience, to use the translated text itself to contextualize the circumstances of its production and reception. In particular, the study of translation effects may help scholars to better understand how a particular community understood their history and signalled their identity. [End Page 249] Georgina Pitt The University of Western Australia Copyright © 2022 Georgina Pitt

Musical words in medieval culture and pamphlets

The musical instruments reflect the national characteristics, traditions, customs and values of each nation, from which the sound is derived. Performing arts in musical instruments as a means of glorifying the spirituality of mankind is the responsibility of folk art, and from time immemorial has been formed and developed among the masses. The national instruments are constantly being perfected by skilled musicians and are distinguished by their vibrancy, musicality and melody. As musical instruments have become more and more in demand throughout history, so has the attention paid to their educational and pedagogical aspects.

Chaucer, Gower, and the Affect of Invention by Steele Nowlin

Reviewed by: Chaucer, Gower, and the Affect of Invention by Steele Nowlin Denise Stodola Steele Nowlin, Chaucer, Gower, and the Affect of Invention. Interventions: New Studies in Medieval Culture. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2016. 274 pp. ISBN: 9780814213100 It is unusual but incredibly useful when authors challenge their readers to think about familiar terms in unfamiliar ways, which is what Steele Nowlin has done here. Calling upon his readers to view the terms “affect” and “invention” through a different lens, he shows us that these two concepts are intimately linked even though “affect” is often used as a synonym for emotion. For Nowlin, affect and emotion are separate concepts that interact with each other. In fact, in his configuration, affect [End Page 98] is a type of “emergence” that precedes an actual feeling or emotion. Because affect concerns an “emerging” potential, it is thus linked to invention, which is, itself, an emerging potential. More specifically, affect emerges and then “collapses” into emotion, and this is analogous to the way in which invention “collapses” into poetic form. By reshaping our perceptions of how affect precedes emotion and is therefore analogous to invention preceding form, we are then able to view poetic invention differently. Ultimately, invention not only shapes poetic form, but can, in many cases, expose cultural narratives that are themselves in need of revision. Moreover, Nowlin does a fine job of contextualizing his theoretical approach within the introductory chapter. He asserts that his work relies heavily on Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, as well as Eve Sofosky Sedgwick. He also uses the work of scholars like Eric Shouse, Brian Massumi, Gregory J. Seigworth, Melissa Gregg, Lauren Berlant, Mary Carruthers, and Rita Copeland. By showing the relationship of his work to that of other scholars—not only those focused on critical theory, but also those who specialize in “feeling theory,” as well as medieval scholars and rhetoricians— Nowlin provides a solid foundation for his theoretical approach. On the other hand, the order of the subsequent chapters is somewhat strained. In the first two chapters, he focuses on Chaucer, first on House of Fame in Chapter 1, and then on Legend of Good Women in Chapter 2. The placement of these chapters makes sense insofar as they both focus on Chaucer and illustrate not only how Chaucer’s works can been seen to deploy Nowlin’s formulation but also how neither of the works pushes past a potential realization of cultural narratives into any sort of action. In House of Fame, physical movement aligns affect with invention, bringing together the literary with the political and ultimately illustrating how the affective dynamic helps us to understand “patterns of cultural power.” In this case, that power is the power of literary men to find their own fame by using women. Dido, in fact, becomes a symbol for what Nowlin calls the “coemergence” of affect and invention, and the form resulting from invention does not provide any answer to Dido’s plight. Legend of Good Women, however, addresses misogyny and antifeminism more fully. Ultimately, though, it does not move past its own misogyny, but rather leaves the reader understanding how unethical that misogyny is. As such, it reveals the cultural narratives in which the work itself exists. By putting these two chapters next to each other, we are able to see both poems rely on affective invention and how the Legend of Good Women moves closer to an invention that more clearly articulates the misogyny of the culture in which it was produced. Chapters 3 and 4 could be brought together into one chapter as both focus on Gower’s Gonfessio Amantis, and both illustrate Gower’s success with the use of affective invention to effect potential change. Chapter 3 shows that the affective invention in the Confessio reveals masculinist cultural discourses and how they shape cultural reality, suggesting a potential need to transform the culture in which it was produced. Similarly, Chapter 4 argues that the chronicle form as a means of codifying significant cultural events and providing an authoritative version of those events has fundamentally opposite [End Page 99] impulses from what Gower’s poem ultimately achieves: invention of not only a...

Introducing the Medieval Ass by Kathryn L. Smithies

Reviewed by: Introducing the Medieval Ass by Kathryn L. Smithies Gwendolyn Inocencio Kathryn L. Smithies, Introducing the Medieval Ass ( Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2020), 163 pp., 7 ills. Kathryn L. Smithies, a medieval historian at the University of Melbourne, presents a concise history of the medieval ass as the second book in the University of Wales Press series on Medieval Animals edited by Diane Heath and Victoria Blud. The series touts itself as the first to mine the "roles and perceptions of individual animals during the Middle Ages" (viii). Smithies follows Thomas Honegger, who contributed the first book in the series, Introducing the Medieval Dragon (2019), and precedes Natalie Jayne Goodison's Introducing the Medieval Swan (2022). Like Honegger and Goodison, Smithies performs the goal of the series, which is to locate a specific animal from the fifth to sixteenth centuries, follow its rich historical and cultural influences, and explore its presence in various theological, philosophical, and political moments. Additionally, she notes the important role that asses play within the tensions of such moments and how they suffuse, deflate, or highlight nuances within cultural frames. Smithies charts lasting resonances and refines and builds knowledge of animals as persuasive symbols, metaphors, and teachers through their illustrative use in a range of textual contexts. Ultimately, this series and Smithies's work on the ass contribute to the "animal turn" in critical theory and humanities scholarship, animality studies, and animal studies. As a result, the ubiquity of animals in the history of rhetoric emerges. In her introduction, Smithies names the paradoxical rhetoric and the "contesting reputations" of the ass featured in four sections that highlight various medieval beast genres (6). She also defines her terms. Though English speakers know the ass as a donkey, "the medieval world knew the ass by its Latin name—asinus" (8). Using this rationale for the term, she then lists the multiple iterations of [End Page 274] the ass for discussion: the domestic ass, the wild ass (onager), the hybrid ass (mule), and the mythical ass (onocentaur). Smithies's first section, "The Natural World of the Ass," situates the ass in nature, showing it removed from the wild and placed within human culture to perform, accompany, and serve. When medieval authors then transfer the domesticated ass into the symbolic structure of communication, its symbolism carries strong cultural resonances. As a result, medieval people knew asses two ways, literally in daily life and theoretically as depicted in encyclopedias and bestiaries (books of beasts) inherited from the classical world. Both genres show medieval authors with an interest in the natural world because medieval culture saw the natural world as arranged by a Christian God, with animals exemplifying "a morally correct life" (21). The first section logically leads to "The Religious Ass" and the ass's natural characteristics—dutiful, humble, hardworking—symbolically linking to the ideal Christian. When associated with Christ, the ass becomes a sign of peace. When it is sometimes gifted with language, it further functions as a didactic exemplar that reflects ideal Christian behavior. However, some examples conversely and paradoxically show wild asses both representing monks voluntarily sequestered from the world as well as the embodied Devil. Their incessant braying ties to the spring equinox, which shortens daylight, increases darkness, and is associated with evil. Thus, the ass closely relates to the medieval vice-virtue cycle, easily accommodating any author-mediated characterization via their versatile nature, wild or domesticated. Ultimately, all framing of the religious ass—biblical, bestial, hagiographical, or festival—evokes "an emotional audience within a Christian paradigm" (59). The third section, "The Scholastic Ass," proves valuable to the history of animal studies and illustrates a prevailing postmodern concern, the arbitrary line drawn between humans and animals. Taking the concept of the ass as a "powerful prop" that enables "medieval Christians to engage with the divine" (61), it introduces "the emerging uncertainty over the animal-human divide" (68). As a powerful example of the ass's mutable nature applied to humans, the figure of the "Ass Playing a Lyre" gives life to both human passivity and bold action. From a Christian perspective, the figure represents the simple Christian. Additionally, from a scholastic and philosophical perspective, it...

Status, gender and emotions: family conflicts at the Parlement de Toulouse

ABSTRACT As a royal court of justice with jurisdiction over the entire province of Languedoc, southern France, the Parlement de Toulouse left an impressive but largely overlooked legacy of well preserved judicial records. Based on the case study of a 1444 trial pitting a widow, Isabelle de Ferréol, against her stepson, Raymond-Bernard de Montpezat, this article deconstructs the narrative structure of the pleas. Centred on the process of character creation and on the mechanics of defamation, the article analyses how the procurators who represented the plaintiff and the defendant in court shaped the contrasting characters of their clients. Instrumental in framing the true-sounding stories told by the procurators to the court were the politics of the Hundred Years’ War, gender constructs, late medieval family culture, law and literary tropes.

Sanctity and Female Authorship: Birgitta of Sweden and Catherine of Siena. Maria H. Oen and Unn Falkeid, eds. Routledge Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture. New York: Routledge, 2020. xviii + 246 pp. $140.

Sanctity and Female Authorship: Birgitta of Sweden and Catherine of Siena. Maria H. Oen and Unn Falkeid, eds. Routledge Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture. New York: Routledge, 2020. xviii + 246 pp. $140.

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines

A CONDIÇÃO JURÍDICA DAS MULHERES SOLTEIRAS NA PENÍNSULA IBÉRICA MEDIEVAL A PARTIR DO FUERO REAL E DO LIVRO DAS LEIS E POSTURAS

The study of the legal status of women in the 21st century by both jurists and historians thanks to the demands of contemporary society. This raises two reflections: the fluidity inherent in the very notion of female legal identity and the influence that medieval culture exerts on the elaboration of the current female identity. It is to contribute to this debate that we will analyze some of the elements that influenced the elaboration of a legal conception about medieval women, based on the analysis of two of the legal codes that supported a large part of the Latin American legal tradition: the Fuero Real and the Book of laws and postures.The objective of this article is, therefore, to identify and compare, in the two selected legal codes, some legal aspects involving the assignment of social roles to medieval single women in the kingdoms of Castile and Portugal, in the 13th century

Response to Leah Schwebel and Jennifer Alberghini

Response to Leah Schwebel and Jennifer Alberghini Lynn Shutters Leah Schwebel and Jennifer Alberghini demonstrate how consent remains important, even to those who secure it coercively and retroactively. Women want it—or at least the tellers of these stories want women to have wanted it. However offensive, this narrative imperative disrupts present-day perceptions that female consent was utterly foreign to medieval cultures. Yet both authors demonstrate that consent alone does not ensure female empowerment. Their work aligns with Kate Manne's argument distinguishing misogyny from sexism. Sexism, Manne argues, "discriminate[s] between men and women, typically by alleging sexual differences."1 Misogyny, on the other hand, posits men and women's common humanity and potential for virtue, even if that virtue is expressed in gender-specific terms. While sexism assumes women's blanket inferiority, misogyny "differentiate[s] between good women and bad ones, and punishes the latter."2 Consequently misogyny coopts, rather than denies, female interiority: misogyny demands that women yield men "not only their bodies but also their minds, in their capacity for choice, volition, and agency."3 In The Reeve's Tale, Schwebel explains, Aleyn reduces Malyne to a tool for exacting revenge. In Manne's terms, this treatment of Malyne is sexist, a denial of women's humanity, rather than misogynist. Why, then, the need for Malyne's retroactive consent? This vengeance on women is two-pronged: first, the Reeve discounts Malyne's personhood. Second, and contradictorily, the Reeve reinstates Malyne's autonomy through retroactive consent. Schwebel convincingly argues that Malyne's affectionate leave-taking of [End Page 359] Aleyn allows her to reclaim agency and insert herself into a narrative of romance. Additionally, in imagining Malyne as consenting, the Reeve makes her conform to the model of attentive femininity that misogyny demands. Based on his prologue, the Reeve is a man who does not get what he wants from women: we might read The Reeve's Tale as an incel revenge fantasy. The feminist pay-off might be to reframe our questions about consent by considering how an agential act might, paradoxically, be imposed. Alberghini reminds us that narrative impositions of retroactive consent can also come from well-meaning women, such as Eglantine's nurse. The nurse dismisses a non-consensual kiss as "a thynge of nought" and blames Eglantine for rejecting a "gentyl man." Yet she also assures Eglantine that nobody saw the kiss but herself, and she'll never tell. If the kiss of a gentleman can—and should—be accepted, then why is secrecy required? Alberghini suggests that we need not reduce the nurse to an ideological mouthpiece. We might instead see how she articulates the complex negotiations of agency, coercion, and consent that medieval and modern women regularly face. These essays remind us that we cannot historicize consent as a march forward from premodern women who were the dehumanized victims of ideological forces, to modern women who are empowered individuals. As Linda Martín Alcoff argues, our present-day notion of consent "ignores the constrained options within which choices are too often actually made."4 In changing the narrative, we must complicate our understanding of consent and consider additional terms in which sexual violation might be assessed. [End Page 360] Lynn Shutters Colorado State University Footnotes 1. Kate Manne, Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 79. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid., 108. 4. Linda Martín Alcoff, Rape and Resistance: Understanding the Complexities of Sexual Violation (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018), 127. Copyright © 2022 The New Chaucer Society, University of Miami

Proverbial Wisdom and the Pursuit of Knowledge in the Squire's Tale

ABSTRACT Chaucer was deeply interested in questions surrounding knowledge. He confronts the problem of knowledge in the Squire's Tale by examining various types of knowledge, epistemologies, the limits of knowledge, and curiosity. I argue that Chaucer offers a particular tool to approach this problem: proverbs. In the tale, the embedded microgenre of proverbs shows the value of traditionality and communal knowledge and regulates people's behavior. Guiding readers through a process of moral education to evaluate true and false knowledge, proverbs support the tale's argument for pursuing true knowledge grounded in traditional wisdom, while rejecting illicit curiosity and novelty. My examination engages challenging, informative, and diverse material that is widely integrated into Chaucer's works. Given the ubiquitous popularity of proverbs across social classes and their adaptability to a wide range of contexts, this microgenre reveals concerns and interests of fourteenth-century readers, and other aspects of medieval culture, that might otherwise remain hidden.

Stone Pipe and Metal Container: Design Semiotic Analysis of Sacral Objects

Design or the designer’s activity is not only designing an object, but also a complex mode of socialcultural relations and environmental situations. This paper focuses on the semiotic analysis of two historical examples where László Moholy-Nagy’s views ([1946] 1971)—which I interpret as “form adjusting itself to society”—are perfectly applicable. One object included in the design semiotic analysis is a Lakota ceremonial pipe, and the other is a sacral object of European Medieval culture, the Sainte-Foy reliquary of Conques. In both cases, the analysis is centred around formal and functional elements and materials that are impregnated with meaning. I intend to explain how, as sign vehicles (signifiers), the shape, ornamental elements, and materials of sacral objects, represent meanings and content. How is the form of these objects related to their function?

ЗАГАЛЬНОЛЮДСЬКИЙ ЗМІСТ КУРТУАЗНИХ ЧЕСНОТ ЯК ПЕРЕДУМОВА ГУМАНІЗМУ ВІДРОДЖЕННЯ

The article examines the formation of the foundations of the humanist ideology of the Renaissance in the culture of the European Middle Ages. The main stages of the formation and development of the culture of the Middle Ages and their achievements are traced. We pay attention on the "The Autumn of the Middle Ages" (J. Huizinga) and on such an important component of the culture of that time as the court culture, the culture of castles. It was during this period of a long era that the most important changes took place in the social and spiritual worlds of Europeans, which ultimately enabled the formation of the ideology of humanism with the system-forming worldview principle of anthropocentrism. On the examples of the work of troubadours and trouvers, Ch. de Troyes, B. de Born, the so-called of "marginal" sources that are, as it were, on the periphery of the text of medieval culture, but significantly supplement it ("The Miracles of Notre Dame" by Gautier de Coinci), an analysis is given of the filling of traditional courtly virtues with a new universal meaning, the affirmation of the worldview principle of anthropocentrism in the practice of human relations. The impact on this process of the Albigensian Crusade, a kind of catalyst for the growth of the demand for humanity in a society full of suffering and death, is noted. To virtues with a traditional meaning, such as kindness, generosity, courage, virtues with a humanistic meaning are added – mercy, love and friendship with vassals, care for subjects, equality with them in everything. New dramatic and even tragic dimensions of courtly virtues discovered by the troubadours during and after the Albigensians crusade became synonymous with humanism, a prerequisite for the formulation of the humanistic ideology of the Renaissance. The obvious connection with innovations in the system of the European society moral values, in the interpretation of the concept of common law, recognition of the right to autonomy in the development of a secular state is indicated.