Medieval Poem Research Articles

Poetics and topics of the medieval English romance “Sir Isumbras” (14<sup>th</sup> century)

The article considers poetic, thematic and compositional features of the early English chivalric romance “Sir Isumbras”. This is a pilot study for Russian literary criticism, and its relevance is due to the insufficient research into this medieval poem in English-language literary criticism. The objectives of the study are to describe the strophic organization of the text variants of the romance found in different manuscripts, its correlation with the strophic organization of the poetic hagiography sample “The Life of Saint Eustache”, presented together with “Sir Isumbras” in MS Ashmole 61, and to consider plot motifs common to this novel and the works of various genres including the indicated hagiography and the chivalric romance “Sir Gowther”, as well as the composition specifics of plot scenes, the features of narrative techniques and the placement of plot accents. In the process of analysis, we have established that the main unit of strophic organization is the twelve-line tail-rhyme stanza of chivalric romances, however, the six-line stanza, usual for lives of the saints in verse, also has a large share; the plot of the novel is connected with different genres and subgenres and includes their characteristic motifs; the composition of the plot scenes is distinguished by two types of symmetry - both mirror and stepped; the forms of psychologism are still absent, but there are heroes’ stereotyped actions characteristic of folklore and associated with their emotional state whose verbal expression is similar to oral poetry formulas; finally, the emphasis of the final battle scene determines the meaning of the novel and gives it the features of a certain subgenre.

Fragmentology and Graph Technology: A Case Study of Frankfurt Fragm. Lat. II 11

Abstract: The present case study explores a fragment of the medieval poem Pamphilus , found in Frankfurt. This fragment is one of the oldest witnesses of this poem and thus of high interest to better understand the text’s early transmission. The nature of a fragment lends itself to exploratory data analysis using the graph database neo4j. The case study will explore how network metrics can be applied to the study of fragments and show the special care that has to be taken when working with fragmentary material.

Poetik der Visualität

Abstract In recent decades the poetics of the visual has attracted increased scholarly interest in cultural and historical studies; but so far, the topic has rarely been considered from intercultural perspectives. A revealing example of this is Wolfram von Eschenbach’s medieval poem Parzival, composed shortly after 1200, that suggests that his author was – at least to some extent – familiar with the arabian knowledge of his time, as transmitted through the Iberian translation Centre of Toledo. The metaphorical language of the poem evokes contrasts of light and darkness, the phenomenon of haziness and the play of colours. So far, hardly any attempt has been made to relate these motifs to contemporaneous Arabic theory of optics. Influential thinkers such as Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham) studied the structure of the eye, the radiation of light, as well as the effects of reflection and refraction. Whereas these ideas would spread in occidental science only over the course of the 13th century (via Roger Bacon and others), Wolfram’s Parzival ‘reflects’ elementary components of Arabian optics already in an earlier period.

Two Mediaeval Armenian Poems by Frik and Aṙak‘el Bałišec‘i Translations and Comments

The article presents the annotated English translations of two Armenian medieval poems: Frik's "On Adam" and "The Rose and the Nightingale" by Aṙak‘el of Bałēš. Both translations are prefaced by a short bio-bibliographical note on their authors and a brief discussion of the poetic devices used in the poems, as well as of their content, themes, and literary references to other Armenian works.

Two Mediaeval Armenian Poems by Frik and Aṙak‘el Bałišec‘i Translations and Comments

The article presents the annotated English translations of two Armenian medieval poems: Frik's "On Adam" and "The Rose and the Nightingale" by Aṙak‘el of Bałēš. Both translations are prefaced by a short bio-bibliographical note on their authors and a brief discussion of the poetic devices used in the poems, as well as of their content, themes, and literary references to other Armenian works.

The Haunted Island: Medieval History and the Old English Elegies in Brenda Chamberlain’s Tide-race (1962)

Abstract This article explores the relationship between Tide-race, a 1962 memoir by the Welsh poet and artist Brenda Chamberlain, and medieval culture and literature on Ynys Enlli. Written in the decades after the Second World War when Chamberlain had left mainland Wales, Tide-race is a memoir of the artist’s time on Enlli living with its small community of fishermen and farmers. In contrast to other works of twentieth-century island literature, I argue, Chamberlain rejected dominant, medieval patriarchal histories of Enlli, refusing to read the island as a male monastic site, or as a Welsh nationalist or cultural space. Tide-race is a medieval modern text that is deeply ambivalent about what medieval culture means for modern conceptions of identity, specifically Welshness and womanhood. Chamberlain’s late modernist work has been neglected because of her status as a Welsh woman writer working outside of the centres of modernism, and she has never been considered in the context of Medievalism Studies. By bringing archival material from the Brenda Chamberlain papers at the National Library of Wales together with the published memoir, this article brings to light an unremarked upon interest in Old English literature and traces the development of Chamberlain’s medievalism in the post-war period. Although her use of the Old English elegies—The Wanderer, The Seafarer and The Wife’s Lament—has remained unnoticed by Chamberlain’s critics, these early medieval poems are translated and adapted in her prose in ways that allow her to exorcize old grudges and challenge masculine ideals.

The Reproachful Head of the Green Knight: Exploring the eerie, liminality, deep time and duration in ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’

The outcomes presented in this article represent a body of fine artworks that respond to the medieval poem ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’ (c.1380), culminating in the realization of the monstrous head of the Green Knight. I outline influences from an extended base of film, and television, including direct adaptations of the poem, and thematically relevant sources that include analogous narratives; as well as looking at fine art sculpture and painting that have informed my making strategies. I also discuss my theoretical framing of the poem which asserts the Green Knight as an eerie agent of temporality. The relationship between liminal space and monstrous intrusion on the subject is explored, looking to French philosopher Henri Bergson and English writer and cultural theorist Mark Fisher to articulate the subjective implications of deep time manifested in monstrosity. The article charts the ways in which academic research has combined with studio practices to develop and enrich ideas, allowing for a dramatic error in production to become an attribute of a finished work.

Birds in Medieval English Poetry: Metaphors, Realities, Transformations

Birds in Medieval English Poetry: Metaphors, Realities, Transformations

Fettled in on forme: reading Patience as a poetic imitation

: This study offers a critical analysis of the Medieval poem Patienceand its relation to the Vulgate Bible's version of The Book of Jonah. The poet's translation method is seen as being much closer to the Eighteenth-Century idea of 'poetic imitation', rather than 'paraphrase'. The article is in two sections, the first of which offers a detailed appraisal of the Latin text of the Vulgate, with the focus being on the system of parallelism which characterises the Biblical style; the second section explores the poet's response to this structural system and relates his significant transformation of the source to thepoem's 'homiletic' theme. The critical method is that of close textual reading.

Beowulf as Children’s Literature ed. by Bruce Gilchrist and Britt Mize (review)

Reviewed by: Beowulf as Children’s Literature ed. by Bruce Gilchrist and Britt Mize Alexandra Garner (bio) Bruce Gilchrist and Britt Mize, eds. Beowulf as Children’s Literature. U of Toronto P. 2021. Bruce Gilchrist and Britt Mize’s collection Beowulf as Children’s Literature effectively brings together many disparate fields and discourses, from assessing historical perspectives on Beowulf’s appropriateness for children, to examining particular case studies of children’s or young adult retellings, to considering representations of femininity in iterations with illustration. The nine included essays display an impressive range, approaching Beowulf adaptation/s for children conceptually and practically over the last two centuries of literary publication. The volume also includes Gilchrist’s fairly exhaustive bibliography of versions of Beowulf made for or marketed to children, as well as Mize’s interview with Rebecca Barnhouse and James Rumford, two authors of recent children’s adaptations of Beowulf. The collection traces two major threads: first, a historical focus, and second, essays on method and message. These two strands characterize the challenges with approaches to and adaptations of Beowulf as children’s literature—one that scholars working in children’s and young adult literature contend with regularly—which Mize precisely identifies in the Introduction to the volume: “a perception that children’s adaptations of long-appreciated literature will be only subtractive and attenuating, instrumental in purpose, and therefore analytically uninteresting” (5). The included essays demonstrate that Beowulf’s children’s adaptations and retellings are anything but, and show the nuances of different approaches to this single text in its many and varied remediations, adaptations, and recontextualization. Mize’s introduction disclaims this outdated perspective on adaptation directly, distancing the volume from fidelity discourses and identifying instead the dual challenge of remaking Beowulf for readers both modern and young. Despite this assertion that the volume focuses on what can be gleaned from considerations of Beowulf for children rather than question how faithful such adaptations are, discussions of authenticity, fidelity, and “genuine” medievalism do appear throughout the collection. Some, like Mize’s essay, “Beowulf, Bèi’àowǔfǔ, and the Social Hero” as an example, embrace the dialogic relationship [End Page 338] between the antecedent work and its Chinese adaptation to shine new light on the literary and cultural significance of the medieval poem. By re-experiencing the familiar Beowulf through the lens of its Chinese adaptation, Mize argues, we discover and must contend with different value systems at work with regard to heroism, identity, and community. Several of the included essays address this tension between familiar and unfamiliar in retellings and remediations of Beowulf, also touched upon by both Barnhouse and Rumford in their interview, “The Practice of Adapting Beowulf for Younger Readers.” Both Barnhouse and Rumford describe the challenges of retaining enough of the narrative, themes, and medievalism for it to be recognizably Beowulf while also adapting to their particular authorial agenda. Amber Dunai also examines the folkloric elements common to Beowulfs both medieval and modern in her essay “Tolkien, Beowulf, and Faërie: Adaptations for Readers Aged ‘Six to Sixty.’” Dunai adeptly navigates the complexities of these apparently contradictory perspectives in her assessment of the suitability of Beowulf texts for certain demographics of audiences, and how such attempts to categorize or restrict readership reveal implicit biases, priorities, and approaches regarding intended or expected audience. As an influential figure in the fields of medieval studies (and medievalism), fantasy genre studies, and children’s and young adult literature, Tolkien’s approach impacts subsequent literary and popular perspectives, and Dunai’s thoughtful essay thus will prove useful to many working in related fields. This preoccupation with the difference between literature for all and literature specifically for children is another sub-theme to the collection, which Barnhouse and Rumford explore from a publishing perspective while other essays engage it more academically. This is, of course, a question central to and inherent in the study of children’s and young adult literature; like the “Middle Ages” from which Beowulf originates, like the concept of the child itself, children’s literature is an entirely constructed and mutable category. Yvette Kisor’s “Children’s Beowulfs for the New Tolkien Generation,” examines the literary and aesthetic medievalisms that...

Venus sans furs: wolves and women in three medieval poems

ABSTRACT This essay examines the futures and homes which women fashion—the placental spaces they create and occupy—by exploring how women manage fur in three medieval poems. Unlike skin, fur can be both soft and savage, a sign of wealth or evidence of ferocity; in female hands, fur not only marks what is other but also suggests how such a threat might be absorbed or rejected, carefully hidden or extravagantly displayed. Love and hate work themselves out through such handlings of fur, in the process shaping an alternate universe over which medieval women have some control, an order of things they can choose or refuse. The 10th century poem ‘Wulf and Eadwacer’ uncovers this technology for letting go, using fur to describe what must be sacrificed to safeguard the future and rescue the world from teeth and claws. Marie de France’s 12th century lais ‘Lanval’ and ‘Bisclavret’ reimagine this technology, describing women who think with fur strategically, deploying it to divide what gets to live and to reproduce from what must be banished or torn apart.

Pangur Bán, Translation, Postmodernism, Paul Muldoon

«Pangur Bán» is probably the best know poem in Celtic studies, and a poem that tends to become increasingly more popular to audiences outside of Ireland. However, the anonymous, medieval poem has been cherished throughout history for a wide range of poetic, philosophical, intellectual and educational reasons. To inquire into the longevity and popularity of a marginal gloss on his cat by an Irish monk in a German monastery in the ninth century seems appropriate at a time when contemporary literature and applied hermeneutics of all kinds tend to dominate the literary discourses. This essay relates the historical poem to its many translations, for example by Paul Muldoon and Seamus Heaney, and current literary discourses. Why has this enigmatic jeu d’esprit been translated so frequently and why are these translations important? This essay argues that «Anonymous: Myself and Pangur», Muldoon’s version of «Pangur Bán», can be read as a prismatic poem for postmodernist concerns, in his own poetry and in recent theories.

From Medieval Romance to Contemporary Opera: Philosophy, Allegory, Eros

From Medieval Romance to Contemporary Opera: Philosophy, Allegory, Eros

“As Soon as a Man Comes to Life, He Is Old Enough to Die”: Heidegger and Chapter XX of Der Ackermann aus Böhmen

Abstract In section 48 of Being and Time, Heidegger quotes from chapter XX of Der Ackermann aus Böhmen, a late medieval prose poem written in Early New High German, circa 1400: “As soon as a man comes to life, he is at once old enough to die.” In this paper, I provide the context for the quotation. I also suggest that Heidegger’s interest in Der Ackermann cannot be explained solely in terms of his believing the poem was the source of the quotation on page 245 of Being and Time. I offer a justification for this claim by showing that Heidegger’s discussion of death in Being and Time employs three important images: “debt,” “inheritance,” and “ripeness” – all of which can be found in chapter XX Der Ackermann. I show these “borrowings” to be at once a reference to the context of the Christian/humanist heritage to which they belong and a part of the newly evolving Daseinsanalytik.

The Lord’s Goodbye / Bertilak’s Ghazal and Antigone Regina

With The Lord’s Goodbye / Bertilak’s Ghazal, I wanted to give myself the challenge of incorporating the Arthurian legend into the Medieval Persian ghazal form. The ghazal’s stylistic characteristics are incredibly fascinating and unique compared to traditional Western forms, especially the rhyming patterns. I realised I also found this stylistic distinctiveness in Medieval poems, notably ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, with its unique alliterative form. This poem draws similarities between the themes generally explored in a ghazal (abandonment, love, and religious imagery) and the story of Sir Gawain. I created a deliberate ambiguity between the two female characters, respectively described as her and Her (the capitalisation reinforcing the religious aspects of the Virgin Mary, who has a major role in the poem). The erotic connotations of Gawain’s relationship with Bertilak also helped with adapting the ghazal to the Arthurian genre. Through this poem, I hope to illustrate the malleability of the myth; a modern Arthurian retelling could deal with queer themes and interpretations, for example, or explore its influence outside of the Western psyche from a non-European perspective. I wrote Antigone Regina to experiment with the triolet form and to expand on the father-daughter relationship in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus. My favourite aspect of this form is the opportunity to make the same line take different meanings through the poem. The line ‘Oedipus’ grave and weeping blood’ plays on the word ‘grave’, hence the comma that appears in the last line. I also wanted to draw on the relationship that various retellings of the myth placed between humans and gods, as well as the role of ancestry and inheritance – not as a curse, but a fundamental part of human experience on both the individual and the societal level. Although this poem does not explicitly deal with the Arthurian story, it therefore still speaks of the role of poems as important reinterpretations of a myth.

David Lowery’s "The Green Knight": An Ecocinematic Dialogue between Film and Poem

A “faithful” film adaptation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has long been awaited. The romance lends itself well, it seems, to cinema in its vivid staging, psychology, and suspense. David Lowery’s The Green Knight (2019) reflects its visual splendor but dismantles its plot, the relationship of its characters, re-signifies its significant objects—ax, shield, and girdle. It forefronts contemporary anxieties about film revision of a medieval poem and invites us to examine our technical engagement with and representation, then and now, of the natural world. By suggesting that Gawain might die by the Knight's third blow, Lowery challenges the human exceptionalism inherent in all fantasies of the hero’s journey through a forest (the point of which is to get through it alive). Rather, Gawain remains with the Knight in a state of ambiguity, and either engraves or becomes the stump shown at the end, which bears his new name. This essay puts both poem and film in dialogue with each other to show how Lowery's ecocinematic film "re-greens" a text already given much ecocritical examination.

New Translation of the First Nibelungenlied Adventure into Russian

This article analyzes the existing translations of the German medieval epic poem Nibelungenlied into Russian. Russian translations, made by M. I. Kudryashev in 1889 and Yu. B. Korneev in 1972, were based on the outdated publication of the Nibelungenlied edited by K. Bartsch. The edition by K. Bartsch is rather a compilation than a critical study. The basis for this edition was the manuscript B, in which K. Bartsch made a great number of amendments. That is why K. Bartsch’s edition cannot be regarded as a suitable source for translation. In contrast, the translation by Yu. B. Korneev contains a number of factual inaccuracies and additions caused by the translator’s aim to keep the original metre. The article shows that it is necessary to make a new Russian translation of the Middle High German masterpiece. The article provides a review of possible problems facing a translator: accuracy of translation; making comments that give missing information or explain unclear places in the text. It argues in favour of overt translation with comments that help readers to understand the text which is a product of both another culture and another time. The article features a new translation of the first chapter of the Nibelungenlied (the manuscript B) with comments.

Cloak and Cruentation

The Medieval epic poem the ‘Nibelungenlied’ makes use of two supernatural elements. There is a cloak that renders a character invisible, and the phenomenon of cruentation is trial by ordeal, which supposedly reveals who the murderer of a victim is. Although critics have stated the importance of these two elements to the narrative, the questions of how and why these elements are crucial remain under-analysed. This paper seeks to fill this gap in current research by assessing each supernatural phenomenon’s narrative function. I argue that their supernatural qualities are not the only aspects that link them, and that it is their power to alter what is (in)visible that makes them a catalyst for changing socio-cultural power dynamics in the text, ultimately leading to the tragic ending of the poem.

Traduzir o canto de Christine de Pizan no confinamento

Christine de Pizan left a very varied work regarding literary themes and genres, her first poems being written in verses, ballads, virelais, rondeaux, jeux a vendre and some songs. In this study, we will present two of her lyric compositions in translation into Portuguese, Ballade XI and Virelai I, in which Christine de Pizan regrets her new reality: the loneliness of widowhood and the contradiction of poetic activity in disguising and revealing her feelings. The aim of this work is to show that the translation of these medieval poems can illustrate principles of the translation of poetry that go beyond the meaning and form of the text. For that, we resort to some considerations by authors such as Antoine Berman and Mario Laranjeira, for whom the translation can shelter the other, can reveal the identity of a text and say something about its history. We also emphasize the distance in the timeline that separates the composition of the source texts and the translation exercise proposing our work as a witness to the other, aiming to offer the original a continuity in this century, giving it the shelter that the stranger can receive in distant lands.

<i>La Commedia Scientifica</i> – Dante and the scientific virtues

Abstract. The ethical challenges facing contemporary science range from scientific misconduct to the rightful treatment of people, animals and the environment. In this work, we explore the role of virtue ethics, which concern the character of a person, in contemporary science. Through interviews with 13 scientists, eight of whom are geoscientists, we identify six virtues in science (honesty, humility, philia, innocence, generosity and reticence), paired with vices, and construct a narrative argument around them. Specifically, we employ the narrative structure of the late medieval poem The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, and draw on its moral universe to explore the scientific virtues. Using this narrative device, we make the case for virtue ethics being a reliable guide for all matters scientific. As such, this work lays out a modern code of conduct for science.