Medieval Theory Research Articles

Middle English Romance and the Craft of Memory by Jamie McKinstry

Reviewed by: Middle English Romance and the Craft of Memory by Jamie McKinstry Maud Burnett McInerney Jamie Mckinstry, Middle English Romance and the Craft of Memory. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 2015. Pp. 289. ISBN: 978–1–84384–417–4. $99. Jamie McKinstry’s Middle English Romance and the Craft of Memory promises to explore ‘the workings of the memorial faculty’ (9) in the romance genre. Romance, of course, is always in some sense about remembering the past (one could indeed say the same of narrative in general), but this book wants to think about how memory is figured within the romances as ‘a set of processes and challenges experienced by the characters and audience’ (18). In other words, McKinstry is arguing that romance expresses a characteristic self-consciousness regarding the importance of memorial practice. The book opens with an overview of medieval theories of memory, beginning with Aristotle’s Memoria and moving through medieval thinkers such as Hugh of St Victor and Thomas Aquinas, all of whom are interested not simply in the cultivation and training of memory for more or less practical purposes, but in the related questions of what memory is and how it works; interestingly, McKinstry notes that Aristotle’s emphasis on the visual structure of memory appears to be confirmed by modern neuroscience. The essential point of this chapter, however, concerns the relationship of memory to time; recollection, the memorial work, is what moves the past into [End Page 142] the present and then on to the future. I must confess, however, to being completely baffled by one of the final points in the chapter. The statement ‘order and disorder are inherently antithetical to human memorial ability, the former being much easier to negotiate than the latter’ (42–43) appears to contradict earlier statements about the essential nature of order to the construction and preservation of memory; earlier, McKinstry describes Hugh of St Victor’s construction of a memorial Ark as ‘a memorial expedition which seeks to conquer disorder or emptiness of space with order’ (32), which would seem to mean that order is anything but antithetical to human memorial ability. The rest of the book is all too often marred by such confusion. The second chapter expands upon the importance of place to memory, of geographical nodes as an essential connection to the past. A reading of Sir Orfeo grounds McKinstry’s argument about the relationship between topography and redaction, but does so somewhat precariously; certainly the romance’s transposition of its characters from a Classical to a Middle English context (via Anglo-Saxon and Celtic ‘memorial places’ [54]) operates to move the past into the present. To read the romance as ‘a literary ordering of a tale’s earlier contexts or unfamiliar spaces’ (59) and to argue that we could read other romances the same way if we were only aware of their sources, however, seems rather obvious; as Barthes insisted as long ago as 1972, ‘a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation . . . a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination’ (Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’ in Image / Music / Text, trans. Stephen Heath [New York: Hill and Wang, 1977, 148]). Subsequent chapters treat romances well-known (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Troilus and Criseyde, Le Morte Darthur) and less well known (Sir Gowther, Sir Degrevant, Sir Isumbras), considering memorial rituals, the function of forests and other ‘memorial landscapes,’ the storage and recuperation of memory, and failures of memory. Never, however is the centrality of memory to romance in particular addressed directly. McKinstry insists that ‘the present and the future is [sic] shaped . . . by the past in romance’ (161) without ever considering that the same could be said equally forcefully of both epic and history, genres that co-exist with romance in the medieval period. It also seems curious, given the McKinstry’s emphasis on the topographical, to find no reference at all to Pierre Nora’s ‘lieux de mémoire,’ perhaps the most influential exploration of topography and temporality in recent memory, available in English as Rethinking France: Les Lieux de M...

Akty woli w myśli średniowiecznej — od św. Augustyna do Wilhelma z Auxerre

Harry Frankfurt’s concept of autonomy that has been acknowledged as one of the most important theories of autonomy underlines the essential role of a moral agent’s ability to reflect on herself and her life. The core element of the concept is the ability of a moral agent to formulate first as well as second order desires. Intriguing seems the fact that we can find the concepts referring to the complexity of the will and its first and second order acts already in medieval thought. In this paper I examine the development of the terminology and argumentation employed in these medieval concepts which analyze first and second order acts of the will as well as the subtle difference between various acts of the will. I focus on the concepts formulated until the first half of the 13 th century pointing out to the terminology and arguments which became the point of departure for late medieval theories of the will.

In the Skin of a Beast: Sovereignty and Animality in Medieval France by Peggy McCracken

Reviewed by: In the Skin of a Beast: Sovereignty and Animality in Medieval France by Peggy McCracken Charlie Samuelson Peggy McCracken. In the Skin of a Beast: Sovereignty and Animality in Medieval France. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. Pp. 240. $45.00. Peggy McCracken's newest book is about how "literary texts use human–animal encounters to explore the legitimacy of authority and dominion over others" (1). Over the course of In the Skin of a Beast, McCracken convincingly argues that medieval literature stages encounters between humans and animals to think about power dynamics among people. Yet, while animals provide a forum for thinking about relations of sovereignty among humans, this book is nonetheless careful not to overlook the specificity of the animal; indeed, it is particularly concerned with animal bodies. Furthermore, because she is concerned both with the reciprocity of encounters and with the process of asserting authority, which is never straightforward or even complete, McCracken shows a unique and valuable concern for recovering how animals have responded to humans' attempts to exercise power over them. Thoroughly versed in poststructuralist theory, In the Skin of a Beast [End Page 359] thus explores how medieval literary texts look through, at, with, and "against" animals; and while critics have been looking at animals for some while, this book's invaluable insight is that animals will also help us think through the intricacy of medieval representations of sovereignty. As McCracken acknowledges, the term "sovereignty" does risk anachronism: "We know that the notion of a 'sovereign nation-state' does not apply to the territorial governments of the Middle Ages" (4). Yet, similarly to how much may be gained from embracing the figurative functions that animals serve in medieval literature, so too is there much to be gained from bringing this concept tinged with modernity into dialogue with the medieval period, in order to think about "contractual rule and the consent to be governed" as well as the "[l]ayers of obligation and authority" that "define medieval political structures" (6) in all their complexity. McCracken's corpus comprises a dazzling array of texts: vernacular Bibles and biblical commentaries, short didactic pieces, fables, lais, romances, and chansons de geste; this book also emphasizes manuscript illuminations. Its central exhibits date from the twelfth to the fifteenth century. Its geographical and linguistic scope is similarly ambitious, embracing Old and Middle French material, as well as texts originally written in Latin, Old Norse, and Middle High German. Each chapter brings together several works, and the argument advances almost more like a lyric than a narrative. Going from one chapter to the next is not simply a matter of going from "a" to "b"; rather, each new analysis returns, spiral-like, to fundamental problems addressed previously, further scrutinizing and deepening insight into them. The effect is kaleidoscopic, with increasingly intricate elements and connections brought into the mix. The first chapter is about the flaying of animal skins, which, McCracken argues, functions as a complex "technology of human sovereignty" (12). This chapter moves from vernacular renderings of Genesis to the fifteenth-century Conte du papegau, which is, in turn, read alongside earlier romans antiques. As she proceeds through these sources, McCracken shows how flaying skins is both about survival and about relations of dominion; indeed, these skins, which were worn, exposed, written on, and so forth, are both the "material" and the "symbolic support for claims to sovereign power" (29). According to McCracken, in the Middle Ages, as in Foucault's concept of biopolitics, human sovereignty was "always already grounded on the capacity to regulate life" [End Page 360] (30). This chapter concludes by turning to the little-known twelfth-century Romans des romans in order to imagine how animals might respond to the ethics of parading their corpses. Animal responses are, though, perhaps more at stake in the following chapter, which focuses on human–animal encounters that are cast in more affective terms. This chapter traces the (rather surprising) trope of wolves that are domesticated in a variety of saints' lives, in Marie de France's Fables, and in her lai "Bisclavret." McCracken imagines submission both as the animal behavior par excellence and as...

RUNNING DETAILS ON THE TWO MOVEMENTS IN THE INTELLECTUAL HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND IDEAS

A long tradition concerning the causes of the planetary movements existed as to the movements on the earth: the so called problem de motu locali. Starting from late middle Ages many criticisms were carried out against the Aristotelian doctrine of natural and violent motions. A well accredited and historically coherent theory to explain the movement and the change of movement was the medieval theory of impetus substantially developed by Jean Buridan (ca. 1300–ca. 1360) and by Nicolas d’Oresme (1320? 1325?–1382) on the basis of ideas that came back to John Philoponus (490–570).

Fragments for a medieval theory of prosthesis

Medieval surgery adumbrates a theory of the body in which flesh, because it is sanguine, is radically different from the other simple members that make up the body, such as skin, which are understood instead to be spermatic. In contrast with spermatic members, sanguine flesh is renewable, and so is held to be able to stand in the place of lost, diseased or injured spermatic parts. Surgical theory and practice utilises and artificially enhances this natural capacity of flesh to supplement and substitute in its remedies to repair the body, in what is broadly termed ‘incarnatyf’ medicine in Middle English. This essay suggests that this ‘incarnatyf’ tradition is part of a missing history of prosthesis, which in turn grounds forms of medieval prosthetic thought in two Middle English examples: the miracle of Cosmas and Damian, in which a living man’s rotten leg is replaced with the healthy leg of a dead man; and a series of connected revelations in Bridget of Sweden’s Liber Celestis, in which incorporation into the body of Christ is effected through Christ’s own practice of surgical prosthesis. Raising questions about the relationship between self and other, life and death, and the human and divine, the medieval ‘incarnatyf’ imaginary also asks questions about the possibilities and limits of prosthesis as a metaphor for community and for the body of Christ itself.

Silence in the Exeter Book Riddles

Many Old English riddles of the Exeter Book delight in sonic play, but a small number luxuriate instead in provocative silences. This article brings together contemporary and medieval sound theory to examine silence in the riddles, arguing that attitudes to silence were ambivalent rather than negative. At times, the silence of the suffering being is potentially an act of resistance to the craft of the riddles, as well as an invitation to listen for other voices silenced by Anglo-Saxon culture. The final section of the article reveals that the destructive consumption of the bookworm of Riddle 47 is not merely the act of a bad monastic reader, but instead produces “signal noise,” which generates new content, new art, and new ways of reading Anglo-Saxon literature in which the loss of the past is celebrated, rather than lamented.

Notes sur les assises méthodologiques d’une « histoire littéraire structurale »

This article examines the conditions in which H. R. Jauss, in his conference entitledLiteraturgeschichte als Provokation(1967), elaborated a new theoretical approach of “structural literary history”. The central position this essay holds in literary theory has accounted for its enabling a turning point in the practice and the pedagogy of literary studies : it provides a model for the problematic articulation between structural analysis and historical interpretation of texts. In an attempt to put his theory into perspective, the German historian conducted two research projects in medieval genre theory. He bases his argument on the example of animal tales from the satiricalRoman de Renartof the late 12th century, and asserts that philologists, in their extensive search for evidence based on manuscript sources, have discarded both the hermeneutical interest and the structural variety developed by storytellers in their texts. This study wishes to measure the scope and the results of this instructive methodology in the context of its didactic application. It discusses the roots of the problem, as well as the potential significance of “structural literary history” for our contemporary understanding of the theory and the practice of reading.

Number Symbolism in Pearl: Lines 720–721

Concatenation is one of the hallmarks of the intricately wrought dream vision Pearl. However, in the transition from Section XII to XIII (lines 720–721), this structuring device fails. While several scholars have attempted to explain this breakdown of formal integrity, few have considered its numeric resonances. The crux at lines 720–721 can be read as an intensification of the symbolic numbers twelve and five. Drawing on biblical and patristic sources, medieval number theory, and critical discussions of Pearl’s structuring principles, I argue that the displacement of the link-word ryȝt by the name of Iesus is not a mere instance of carelessness on the part of author or scribe but a considered and carefully constructed comment on the distinction between the mundane and celestial planes.

The Theory and Phenomenology of Love

This second issue of Interfaces: A Journal fo Medieval European Literatures addresses the subject of The Theory and Phenomenology of Love. It brings together readings of medieval representations and explanations of love as an affection, passion, sentiment, attraction, or tension, with work on the connections between literary discourses of love and the history both of emotions and gender roles. Approaching the subject of the nature of love, and the ways it manifests itself, the authors create links between scientific and poetic discourse and highlight the relationship between the experiences of love, described and treated in literary texts, and the specific historical, cultural, and social environments in which those texts were produced. Not only do the articles reach original results within their fields; taken as a whole, the dossier, ranging as it does from the Late Antiquity to the fifteenth century, and across a Europe situated within a wider Eurasian space, offers deep insights into social history, the history of emotions, and the study of gender and sexuality.

The Praxis of the Tractrix

This essay analyzes Zorns Lemma (1962–1970), a film made by American artist Hollis Frampton (1936–1984). Noting Frampton’s use of Robert Grosseteste’s thirteenth-century treatise De luce [‘On Light’] as a key aspect of the film’s soundtrack, the essay argues that Grosseteste’s investigations of light as a medium played a key role in Frampton’s theorization of cinema. As such, his interest in medieval light theories spurred him to develop a powerful, idiosyncratic response to prevailing discourses of media and medium specificity during the 1960s. When examined in light of contemporaneous projects by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) and Roland Barthes (1915–1980), Zorns Lemma points up the significance of medieval thought in the period’s conceptions of art and time.

Contenuto e significato del prologo al Narciso di Hryhorij Skovoroda

Hryhorij Skovoroda (1722-1794) was an alumnus at the Kyivan Mohyla Academy, an institution founded in 1632 that played a crucial role in Eastern Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its courses were held primarily in Latin, and Greek and Hebrew were also taught. Skovoroda is considered the last exponent of Ukrainian baroque and founder of Eastern European philosophy. The significant influence of his thinking can be found in many Russian and Ukrainian writers and thinkers. The article focuses on the writing and publication of Skovoroda’s dialogue Narcissus and its Prologue. The figure of Narcissus is, unusually, positive for Skovoroda and connected to the theme of know thyself in the Augustinian sense. He was led to make this association by an iconographic tradition which can be traced back to certain late medieval representations of Narcissus as a symbol of the contemplative life. From the ontological point of view, it is suggested that Skovoroda’s ontology is a Christian Plutarchism: a transformation of Stoic individual hegemony into an ability to grasp the invisible divine, in a perspective close to St. Augustine. The Prologue is Skovoroda’s philosophical testament: an original synthesis of Latin culture and humanism with modernism and Hesychasm’s spirituality.

‘THESE ARE THE TONES COMMONLY USED’: THE TONOS DE CANTO DE ÓRGANO IN SPANISH BAROQUE MUSIC THEORY

In the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, composers and music theorists moved away from the system of the eight ecclesiastical modes that had been elaborated by medieval theorists and was later applied to polyphonic music (including the varied system extended to twelve modes in the sixteenth century) towards modern bimodal tonality. Although several modal systems coexisted within this time period, a distinct variant of the eight modes, often known in modern scholarship as the church keys, developed as a practical solution to problems associated with the performance of psalms and other recited formulas (especially the Magnificat) in alternatim practice between the choir in plainchant and the organ. A scarcity of research on this topic within investigations of Spanish music prompts us to outline an introduction to a matter so crucial to music theory of the baroque period in Spain. Thus we present an overview of the treatment of the church keys or tones in Spanish treatises over a long period of two centuries, and focus briefly on particular contributions made by individual authors.

Consuetudine, Coutume, Gewohnheit and Ius Commune. An Introduction

Various views of the historical phenomenon of custom coexist in the world’s legal historical scholarship. Some scholars hold that customs are the primary feature of a people’s autonomy and selfdetermination in the permanent struggle against the »imperialist« attitudes of major powers. Others try to stay closer to historical sources, where the concept of custom has apparently served as a tool of argumentation that has proven very useful in defending the jurisdictional rights of collective subjects, such as cities, religious communities or regional powers. The key to correctly understanding medieval theories of custom is the relationship between custom and the ius commune. The latter is the complex of normative authorities and doctrinal interpretations produced by jurists from the 12th to the 15th century. This relationship was not as conflictual as some of the legal historical literature depicts. Some examples regarding serfdom, private peace and customary procedures of evidence show how complicated the intertwining of the ius commune, customary laws and municipal statutes in the late Middle Ages can be. Recommended citation: Conte, Emanuele, Consuetudine, Coutume, Gewohnheit and Ius Commune. An Introduction, in: Rechtsgeschichte - Legal History Rg 24 (2016) 234-243, online: http://dx.doi.org/10.12946/rg24/234-243

Krugman's Medieval Theory of Currency Crises

This paper proves that Krugman’s currency crisis model belongs to the medieval time, when commodity money prevailed. This paper also reveals many mistakes of his model. Instead, this paper reconsiders the crisis model offered by Choi (2014). Currency crisis arises from the denial of stealing by government and its refusal to depreciate the local currency. Then, the arbitrage by the people, including government bureaucrats, leads to the outflow and dry-up of foreign reserves.

THE FORMAL AND THE FORMALIZED: THE CASES OF SYLLOGISTIC AND SUPPOSITION THEORY

As a discipline, logic is arguably constituted of two main sub-projects: formal theories of argument validity on the basis of a small number of patterns, and theories of how to reduce the multiplicity of arguments in non-logical, informal contexts to the small number of patterns whose validity is systematically studied (i.e. theories of formalization). Regrettably, we now tend to view logic 'proper' exclusively as what falls under the first sub-project, to the neglect of the second, equally important sub-project. In this paper, I discuss two historical theories of argument formalization: Aristotle's syllogistic theory as presented in the "Prior Analytics", and medieval theories of supposition. They both illustrate this two-fold nature of logic, containing in particular illuminating reflections on how to formalize arguments (i.e. the second sub-project). In both cases, the formal methods employed differ from the usual modern technique of translating an argument in ordinary language into a specially designed symbolism, a formal language. The upshot is thus a plea for a broader conceptualization of what it means to formalize.

Os Lusíadas na tradução de William Julius Mickle: a reencenação de uma translatio studii et imperii

The Lusiad; or, The Discovery of India, a tradução de Os lusíadas de Camões feita pelo poeta escocês William Julius Mickle, publicada na Inglaterra em 1776, fez sucesso em sua época e no século que se seguiu, sendo até hoje a mais lida e citada entre todas as traduções poéticas de Os lusíadas para o inglês. Este artigo procura demonstrar que a tradução de Mickle (e os elementos paratextuais que a acompanham) são uma reencenação da teoria medieval da translatio studii et imperii (a transferência não apenas do poder imperial, mas também do conhecimento e da cultura do leste para o oeste). Mickle adaptou a epopeia camoniana para o público britânico do final do século XVIII, rotulou-a como "A Epopeia do Comércio" e acrescentou paratextos de cunho ideológico. Manipulando o poema original tanto poética quanto ideologicamente, Mickle transformou Os lusíadas em uma narrativa a serviço do Império Britânico e contribuiu, como outros "poetas do comércio" que celebraram o crescimento da riqueza e poder da Grã-Bretanha, para forjar uma identidade poética e cultural para o Império Britânico.

Emergency powers and constitutional change in the late Middle Ages

This article gives an account of late medieval theories and practices of emergency powers. More particularly, it examines the relation between emergency powers and constitutional change. It thus seeks to explain how, in the course of the 13th and 14th centuries, European rulers began using their emergency powers to gradually expand their fiscal and legislative competences at the expense of local authorities and the church. As is demonstrated in this article, it was essentially the normalization of emergency powers that made the transition towards a more centralized government possible. This can be explained by a combination of factors, including the government’s claim to an exclusive right to judge what constituted a public necessity, the new focus on prevention and preparation for future necessities, and the increasing identification of necessity with more general claims to ‘public utility’ and the ‘common welfare’.

La sémiologie de Port-Royal

Résumé Cet article examine la Logique de Port Royal en regard des théories médiévales du signe et du langage. Il reprend les célèbres passages consacrés aux signes afin de préciser comment se croisent les notions de représentation et de signification. La Logique de Port Royal récuse la théorie du langage mental, qui était dominante au Moyen Âge tardif, au bénéfice de la force expressive de l’esprit. Celui-ci se subordonne le langage, en une procédure où le langage doit sans cesse s’ajuster à l’idée. L’article montre dans cette conception des rapports entre pensée et langage une présence forte de plusieurs thèses augustiniennes, bien au-delà de la seule définition usuelle du signe. Ni linguistique cartésienne, ni simple théorie cartésienne du jugement, la philosophie du langage de Port Royal se bâtit sur un véritable « augustinisme sémiologique ».

The Monstrous New Art: Divided Forms in the Late Medieval Motet

Anna Zayaruznaya. The Monstrous New Art: Divided Forms in the Late Medieval Motet. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015. Pp. 234 + appendices. Broadly speaking, Zayaruznaya's The Monstrous New Art is about text-music relations in the ars nova motet with a focus on the period spanning 1315 to 1370. Zayaruznaya demonstrates with aplomb that late medieval motet composers were far more sensitive to the texts they were setting than has previously been realized, responding to their matiere (or subject matter) in myriad subtle ways. Her focus is, specifically, on texts concerning fragmentation and disjunction--themes especially frequent in representations of the monstrous, but also present in works on the Trinity (three in one), the stratified body politic, and the two-faced courtly lady. The book's introduction situates the analysis it precedes within ars nova scholarship. It also justifies its focus on monsters, which are characterized, in Zayaruznaya's reading, primarily by a lack of unity. Zayaruznaya rightly notes that her findings--even as they focus on the monstrous--point towards broader aesthetic strategies in ars nova composition and, consequently, that her methodology might productively be applied to other repertoires. Chapter 1, Songs Alive, sets out to show that songs were not infrequently imagined as having bodies. Medieval theorists' zoomorphization and anthropomorphization ranged from the passing reference, such as the Summa musice's description of the cauda as a kind of tail, to full-blown metaphorical identification (e.g. Dante). Sometimes, Zayaruznaya shows, songs are treated as creatures that can both talk and travel. Such a conceit is common in the envois and tornadas of the grand chant. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Je voi/Fauvel in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, MS. fr. 146 version of the Roman de Fauvel. Zayaruznaya convincingly reads this piece as a kind of monstrous birth of an embodied song. The final section of the chapter preemptively responds to the objection that medieval composers would not have conceived of their works as works, let alone works with shapes (instead, the argument goes, they would have conceived of them as sounding events). In response, Zayaruznaya proposes a creature concept of composition (p. 66). While not exclusively about ars nova motets, the chapter's analyses set up what is to follow in that they show the creative interrelations of songs and sundry creatures. The main strength of this chapter lies in its demonstration of the commonality--corporeality--underlying many theorists' discussion of song, envois, and pieces such as Machaut's famous Ma fin est mon commencement and Tout par compas, whose shapes are explicitly thematized. The second chapter, How (not) to Write a Motet: The Exemplary In virtute/Decens, turns to Phillipe de Vitry's motet and its depiction of the monster evoked in Horace's Ars poetica via tale a and hocket. …

Erecting Sex: Hermaphrodites and the Medieval Science of Surgery.

This essay focuses on "hermaphrodites" and the emerging profession of surgery in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Europe. During this period, surgeons made novel claims about their authority to regulate sexual difference by surgically ''correcting" errant sexual anatomies. Their theories about sex, I argue, drew upon both ancient roots and contemporary conflicts to conceptualize sexual difference in ways that influenced Western Europe for centuries thereafter. I argue that a close examination of medieval surgical texts complicates orthodox narratives in the broader history of sex and sexuality: medieval theorists approached sex in sophisticated and varied manners that belie any simple opposition of modern and premodern paradigms. In addition, because surgical treatments of hermaphrodites in the Middle Ages prefigure in many ways the treatment of atypical sex (a condition now called, controversially, intersex or disorders/differences of sex development) in the modern world, I suggest that the writings of medieval surgeons have the potential to provide new perspectives on our current debates about surgery and sexual difference.