Medieval Ways Research Articles

Tourists and pilgrims on their way to Santiago. Motives, Caminos and final destinations

This article proposes a theoretical and analytical approach to modern pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela; a cultural and experiential tourism route for the twenty-first century, founded upon the recovery (idealized) of the medieval way and leading to a Christian sanctuary (where the remains of Apostle Saint James the Great are held). The success of this route is based on the fact that the new tourist mixes pilgrimage motivations (displacement for religious or spiritual motivations) with tourist motivations, such as the search for various landscapes, the need to mentally unwind and to escape from the pressures of daily life. This work analyses the case of Santiago de Compostela and the evolution of the three elements that make up pilgrimage and lead us to understand the current position of the Camino, along with some of its weaknesses.

E. Michael Gerli Celestina and the Ends of DesireCelestina and the Ends of Desire. E. Michael Gerli. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011. Pp. xiv+258.

<i>E. Michael Gerli</i> Celestina and the Ends of Desire<i>Celestina and the Ends of Desire</i>. E. Michael Gerli. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011. Pp. xiv+258.

The Ideal of Handicrafts and the Modern Design Formation: Coincidences and Failures

The research below is trying to focus on the concept of the closely affiliated meaning of handicrafts with the meaning of what today is considered to be modern design. Its main objective is to demonstrate not only through theory but also through a series of key, clear and important historical examples which extend from the dark Middle Ages to modern times that the handicrafts fairly constituted the basis upon which industrial design arose and triumphed in Western societies. An important milestone in the development of this nonnegotiable, close relationship is the Great Britain nineteenth century as it constituted not only the time of the Industrial Revolution, but also the period of re-designing objects according to the medieval ways and methods, asMorris and Ruskin unrealistically believed. Then the European Art Nouveau, the last hope of handicrafts in the applied arts before the complete mass production of Modernism, but also the manual activity ofthethird world countries highlight the similarities and differences between the two concepts of our concern which today remain both important and distinct.

Træhuse fra Aalborg 1050-1600 – Planløsninger og indretninger

Træhuse fra Aalborg 1050-1600 – Planløsninger og indretninger

Bone fractures as indicators of intentional violence in the eastern adriatic from the antique to the late medieval period (2nd–16th century AD)

To test the historically documented hypothesis of a general increase in deliberate violence in the eastern Adriatic from the antique (AN; 2nd-6th c.) through the early medieval (EM; 7th-11th c.) to the late-medieval period (LM; 12th-16th c.), an analysis of the frequency and patterning of bone trauma was conducted in three skeletal series from these time periods. A total of 1,125 adult skeletons-346 from the AN, 313 from the EM, and 466 from the LM series-were analyzed. To differentiate between intentional violence and accidental injuries, data for trauma frequencies were collected for the complete skeleton, individual long bones, and the craniofacial region as well as by type of injury (perimortem vs. antemortem). The results of our analyses show a significant temporal increase in total fracture frequencies when calculated by skeleton as well as of individuals exhibiting one skeletal indicator of deliberate violence (sharp force lesions, craniofacial injuries, "parry" fractures, or perimortem trauma). No significant temporal increases were, however, noted in the frequencies of craniofacial trauma, "parry" fractures, perimortem injuries, or of individuals exhibiting multiple skeletal indicators of intentional violence. Cumulatively, these data suggest that the temporal increase in total fracture frequencies recorded in the eastern Adriatic was caused by a combination of factors that included not only an increase of intentional violence but also a significant change in lifestyle that accompanied the transition from a relatively affluent AN urban lifestyle to a more primitive rural medieval way of life.

Russia's Geo-economic Future; The Security Implications of Russia's Political and Economic Structure

Russia's political-economic structure is a neo-Tsarist patrimonial one that fuses together power and position in traditional, even medieval ways. As a result its economy is hobbled by pervasive systemic corruption, misrule, and chronic sub-optimal outcomes. Of necessity these outcomes have a profound impact on Russian security and defense agendas. This article focuses on the relationship between these pathologies of Russian governance and the security and defense situation in regard to Russia's positions in the Russian Far East (RFE) and in comparison with China. It argues that these security and defense outcomes arising out of these pathologies of misrule are undermining Russia's basis for independent action in the Far East and its ability to assume not only a strong security and defense posture in that region, but also its ability to play an independent role in Asia.

Znaki misterium w liryku Zbigniewa Herberta pt. U wrót doliny

A superior aim of the article was to prove that Zbigniew Herbert’s lyrical works in an unusually clear way gravitate towards drama and theatre. To prove this, the author of the thesis revealed the relationship between the, coming from the volume Hermes, Dog and the Star, lyric At the Gate of the Valley and a mystery play which should be understood not only as a medieval variant of religious drama but also more widely that is in terms of outlook or as an anthropological, historiosophic or metaphoric category. The author of the article showed that for the mystery character of the work speaks not only the subject taken from the Bible or non-Aristotelian action but also sacred character of space-time and, above all, martyrological plot of the lyrical text, showing the suffering of individual characters of the poem as a mirror reflection of the torment of the Saviour. He also noticed that at the beginning of the lyric Herbert used verse which under certain conditions may resemble medieval ways of versification, also typical of dramatic mystery forms and he tried to prove that the author of The Report from a Besieged City, composing his mini drama, used also a film way of watching the stage and the events happening on it. Setting about revealing the relationships between the above-mentioned lyric and a mystery play, the author of the article first showed these signs which indicate the dramatic and theatrical provenance of the poem. He proved that the lyrical subject resigned from the direct characterization of the depicted world and let speak specific stage characters using different forms of dialogue. He showed that the author constructed the statements of individual characters in such a way as to overload them with the surplus of information, typical of stage dialogues. He also proved that the events that the reader follows from the position of the spectator, take place in a specific scenery and the dramatis personae not only have clear psychological construction but they also, as it is proper for the show, use a variety of visual and acoustic signs concerning both the performer and the space. The author of the article deeply hopes that with his thesis he will contribute to enriching traditional analysis of Zbigniew Herbert’s lyrics with such ways of reading that let notice dramatic and theatrical character of his poems.

The Spacious Word: Cartography, Literature, and Empire in Early Modern Spain (review)

PADRON, RICARDO. The Spacious Word: Cartography, Literature, and Empire in Early Modern Spain. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2004. xvi + 287 pp.Among the most famous paintings in the Museo del Prado hangs a large canvas by Velazquez entitled La rendicion de Breda, sometimes known as Las lanzas. In the foreground of the painting, Velazquez depicts the impressive culmination of a great military course of events: the transfer of the key to the city of Breda from the Dutch army to the Genoan-born commander of the Spanish forces, Ambrosio Spinola. Behind them, in the maplike background against which this action is set, the smoke of war rises from the landscape, bordered by a checkered flag and framed by the vertical lances that have made the painting famous. The work could well have been a point of departure for The Spacious Word by Ricardo Padron, which deals with both practices in early Spain and with the maplike qualities of a number of early Spanish texts, the so-called chronicles of the Indies most prominent among them. But if the Velazquez image had been the focal point of this study, the author might have reached very different conclusions from the ones he urges in this provocative and wide-reaching book. For whereas The Spacious Word seeks to demonstrate the affinities between early mapping and the cartographical prose of this same era, Velasquez brings together the visual form of the map and the representation of grand deeds in a way that allows us to recognize their separate historical roots even while they converge to make an impressive view of action and its place.How then does Padron regard the affinities between the mapping practices of the early world and the cartographic prose of the chronicles of Indies? He argues in a twofold way. First, he claims that the representation of space in an abstract, gridlike form, which we have come to regard as normative for maps, was not at all widespread in the early world. On the contrary, he suggests that the large-scale development and regularization of what we conceive as modern mapping practices happened much later than is often supposed. Abstract mapping was the province of a few experts, and hardly played a significant ideological role in the project of conquest and imperial expansion. Indeed, Padron produces compelling evidence in the form of written texts and printed images to suggest that early mapping practice owed far more than is usually supposed to earlier, medieval ways of representing the world. Well into the early age there survived an array of mapping practices whose fundamental notion of space was linear. Distance, the line, and the itinerary, rather than an encompassing sense of space, were the points of orientation for the vast majority of mapmakers throughout the early age. Indeed, the makers of maps could not truly aspire to an accurate and abstract representation of the surface of the earth until the problem of longitude was solved, and that did not occur until the development of timepieces adequate to the required measurements in the eighteenth century. Until that time, mapping practice was not only linear but was also subject to an arbitrariness that was driven by interests and ideologies somewhat alien to those that came into play with the rise of scientific views about world representation. Witness the ad hoc arguments and the contradictions leading up to and following the Treaty of Tordesillas, which separated Spanish and Portuguese claims over in the newly discovered parts of the globe by an imaginary vertical line running near the Cape Verde Islands in the Atlantic.Far more than can be indicated in the space of a brief review, Padron has a very deep understanding both of the technical and scientific issues involved in mapmaking and of the historical needs that were instrumental in sustaining Spain's national interest in this technology, especially the desire to find secure and reliable routes to (and itineraries through) the lands that its explorers were discovering. …

Engendering England: The Restructuring of Allegiance in the Writings of Richard Morison and John Bale

This paper examines the way in which old systems of allegiance are interrogated, and replaced by an emergent nationalism in two writers closely associated with the Cromwell government: Richard Morison and John Bale. In their attempt to contruct nationhood in sixteenth-century England, both Morison and Bale adapt late medieval ways of imagining community in order to provoke a shift in allegiance and a reunification of the English nation modelled on patriarchal structures.

The Education of Children in Kent and Sussex: interpreting the Medieval and Tudor ways

The Education of Children in Kent and Sussex: interpreting the Medieval and Tudor ways

Mary and the Middle Ages: From Diversity to Discipline

For just over a thousand years the Virgin Mary was central to any attempt to defend or explain Christian Orthodoxy. From the formulations at Ephesos and Chalcedon Mary formed part of the understanding of a God made Flesh and of a picture of redemption which was all-embracing in its promise and tantalizing in its accessibility. This essay shows just how wide and diverse were the medieval ways of thinking about Mary and the ways of exploring the possibilities inherent in the figure of the Mother of God. In liturgy and prayer, in homilies and devotional poetry, in a vast array of material forms Mary was made familiar, above all as mother, as intercessor and companion. Unlike the sacraments, among them the all-important Eucharist, Mary was rarely a subject of discipline or of scrutiny; she entered people’s lives early and seemingly effectively. She stood, however, as a boundary-marker of Christian identity, the quintessential barrier between Christians and Others. Mary did become a subject of discipline to people in the lands of conquest and disease outside Europe.

Comparative literature in question

Comparative literature is at once a subject of study, a general approach to literature, a series of specific methods of literary history, a return to a medieval way of thought, a methodological credo for the day, an administrative annoyance, a new wrinkle in university organization, a recherché academic pursuit, a recognition that even the humanities have a role to play in the affairs of the world, close-held by a cabal, invitingly open to all. …

A Reader of the Rose in Bruges

An early 14th-century account book, now kept in the Brugean State Archives, not only contains administrative and financial information in Middle Dutch, but also a collection of Old French excerpts taken from the Roman de la Rose. Found in a manuscript of which the contents allows us to gain a profound insight into the life and activities of its original owner, this florilegium adds to our insight into the milieux in which the Rose was read; the collection also illustrates the fact that the medieval way to read the Rose can often be characterized as a ‘lecture discontinue’. The excerpts are identified and edited.

Depression in post-communist Romania

Depression in post-communist Romania

The Numerical Universe of the 'Gawain-Pearl' Poet: Beyond 'Phi'

Edward Condren examines the manuscript of the Gawain-Pearl Poet in the light of a compositional method well recognized from the literature of ancient Greece and Rome through the Renaissance but largely overlooked by modern criticism. Arguing that the manuscript is a single integrated artifact and not merely a collection, he shows that it is held together, as is the universe, by mathematical equations called the Divine Proportion in the Middle Ages and phi by modern mathematicians. More than a critical study of four poems in a manuscript, Condren's detailed discussion of numeric theory reveals the medieval way of understanding the created universe in neo-Pythagorean and Platonic terms, and it underscores the importance of the quadrivium in the medieval view of an ordered universe. Drawing on medieval theories of proportion and harmony, Condren shows that the manuscript is more intricately designed and presented than anyone has yet recognized and that the poet who created this work was better educated and more self-consciously brilliant than most have imagined. He argues that the order in which the poems appear - with the two poems set in the Middle Ages placed at the beginning and end of the manuscript and the two set in the Judaic era located at the manuscript's center - allows the literal narratives to exfoliate historically from the Old Testament world, through the era of the New Testament, and implicitly to the salvation that lies beyond. Working poem by poem, Condren details the mathematical forms governing the structure of the manuscript and guiding its progress, from the calculated use of decorated initials to sophisticated mathematics involving squares, primes, different counting systems, and geometrical schemes of the pentangle and ultimately the cross.

Architectures of Knowledge and Literary Tradition: A History of the Almanac in Croatia

ABSTRACT The history of the almanac in Croatia is reconstructed through primary research in bibliographic and archival sources. The almanac is a vehicle for knowledge communication in informal contexts, engaging both oral tradition and literary forms traceable to medieval literacy and ways of structuring knowledge. The history of the almanac in Croatia reflects the changing context of the book trade, literacy, and the evolution of language. Four main stages are identified: (1) the beginning of the annual almanac in the seventeenth century; astrological almanacs reflecting the sensibility of the Baroque period; (2) the Enlightenment's stimulation of almanac publishing in the spirit of contemporary secular reforms in agriculture and education; (3) nineteenth-and twentieth-century almanac trade, showing complex and overlapping networks for the production, distribution and appropriation of printed almanacs;(4) roughly the end of World War II, when the almanac slowly moved out of the role of a popular mass medium and into specialized niches represented by regional, diaspora, and religious almanacs.

The King Arthur Myth in Modern American Literature by Andrew E. Mathis (review)

104A RTH U RI AN A Hartmann as a 'model and standard' (x) for later poets such as Wolfram and Gottfried, some of the recurring features of Hartmann's narrative works (e.g. the bipartite structure), and what is known about Hartmann's life. Each of the translated works (or group of works in the case of the lyrics) is preceded by a brief introduction. Given that they cover a lot of ground in a short space, and bearing in mind the intended general audience, these short introductions generally do a good job of preparing readers for Hartmann's works (though one might quibble with the vagueness ofthe manner in which 'courtly love' is invoked in the introductions to Hartmann's Lament and lyrics, or wish that the introduction ofthe lyrics had set forth in clearer terms that Hartmann's 'poems' were in fact musical performances, something that might be worth emphasizing for the general audience at which this translation is directed). A short, seven-page bibliography of critical literature, editions, and translations is included at the end of the volume. Frank Tobin has translated the Lament, Hartmann's lyric poetry, and Poor Heinrich, Kim Vivian Erec and Gregorius, and Richard H. Lawson Iwein, though they make clear in their joint introduction that they wish the whole book to be seen as a collaborative effort (xiii). On their approach to translation, the collaborators write: 'We have endeavored to capture some of the flavor of the medieval way of viewing and expressing things without resorting to obsolete and antiquated formulations foreign to our intended audience' (xiii). The result ofthis approach is a very readable rendering of the verse narratives and lyric poetry that has succeeded admirably in capturing the spirit of Hartmann's elegant Middle High German verses. will hasty University of Florida ANDRF.W E. MATHis, The KingArthurMyth in Modern American Literature. Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland & Co., 2002. Pp. 158. isbn: 0-7864-1171-6. $32. The scope of this study is much narrower than the reference to Modern American Literature in the title would suggest. Not only does it exclude drama and poetry in favor ofprose fiction, but even within this form the choice is highly selective. For a start, it dismisses what can be found in 'the realm of the science fiction and fantasy aisle at the local bookstore,' deeming that they lie outside 'the American literary tradition' (5). It does, however, devote five pages to Hal Foster's Arthurian comic strip Prince Valiant, and six to American National Socialist leader William Dudley Pelley, whom it acknowledges to be 'a marginal figure in the history of literature, film, and politics' (77). It has no interest in historical fiction, but the detective fiction ofRaymond Chandler merits a whole chapter. Some novels in a contemporary setting are examined, but not Bernard Malamud's The Natural, while Walker Percys Lanceht and John Updike's Brazilzre discussed only during a briefdigression on the figure of the Black Knight. Mathis is not concerned with form, however. Rather he explores 'two streams' (5) in modern American fiction: the use of Arthurian myth 'to critique or address historical or contemporaneous events and figures,' which is 'part ofthe general trend of medievalism seen in the formation of fraternal orders among working people in REVIEWS105 the late nineteenth century' (2); and 'a more aesthetic tradition' (4) that discovers how unsuitable are the ideals of an earlier age for contemporary society. It is this dual focus that determines his choice of texts. As a result, he ignores novels placed in an Arthurian setting, unless they comment upon clearly recognizable contemporary figures and events, as does Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Although he discusses the fiction ofJohn Steinbeck at length, he is less interested in The Acts ofKing Arthur than he is in his other novels, which are placed in a contemporary setting. In these, and in the fiction ofRaymond Chandler, John Gardner, and Donald Barthelme, he finds evidence that the ideals ofArthur's court are unsuited to modern American society. This approach has merit, and it reminds Arthurian scholars of contemporary events that may have influenced the authors, e.g., Matthew Arnold's...

Impolitic Bodies: Poetry, Saints, and Society in Fifteenth-Century England—the Work of Osbern Bokenham by Sheila Delany (review)

running head? sheila delany, Impolitic Bodies: Poetry, Saints, and Society in Fifteenth-Century Enghnd—the Work ofOsbern Bokenham. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp. xii, 236. isbn: 0-19-510989-9. $19.95. Sheila Delany's book is as complex and ambitious as its title and subtitle suggest; ImpoliticBodies examines the work ofthe Osbern Bokenham and his workin a range of contexts linked by ideas of the body, but also as diverse as Poetry, Saints, and Society in Fifteenth-Century England implies. In the process ofher examination, she makes a case for the value of Bokenham's all-female legendary as an important work ofthe fifteenth-century, showing it working in multi-valent ways. Readers ofDelany's earlier works won't be disappointed; while sharing critical perspectives and lively (if occasionally contentious) prose with her previous oevre, Impolitic Bodies also illuminates the importance of an obscure figure whose work does a great deal more that most fifteenth-century authors are generally given credit for. In 'Introductions,' Delany lays out her project. Acknowledging Bokenham's obscurity (the only current edition ofhis work is Delany's translation ofhis Legendary, published in 1992), she provides a useful biography, and locates him at Clare Priory in East Anglia, during 'an especially disturbed period of England's national history' (22). For those ready to dismiss the fifteenth century and its literature as dull or insignificant, Delany notes that Bokenham's poetry is 'both good enough and important enough to illuminate Chaucer's work and Chaucer reception, gender studies, late-medieval European cultural history, the development of hagiography, and English political life. The friar's achievements are substantial' (4). She then reveals how her work will consider these virtues through the lenses of three different types ofbody: the corpus ofpoetic and theological works that Bokenham used and critiqued, the female body represented in his hagiography, and the 'body politic' of English society on the brink of the Wars of the Roses. This discussion reveals Osbern Bokenham as a poet aware of his limited audience, his literary forebears, and the political world to which he was connected by friends and patrons. The corporal metaphor, Delany demonstrates, is essential to Bokenham in the structuring ofhis work and in producing its doctrinal meaning. While not building a 'text-as-body' herself, Delany relies on these metaphors as a 'taxonimic device' (28). She begins with the textual body of literary tradition, focusing particularly on Bokenham's ambivalence towards Chaucer, especially his Legend of Good Women, which the Legendary echoes structurally and thematically in order to critique. She next considers the actual bodies ofthe thirteen saints in Bokenham's own work, with attention to the theological and moral implications of his specific portrayals, and finally considers the role of the individuals who make up Bokenham's patrons and audience and their function in the body politic. Delany concludes with a consideradon of the 'issues of historicist and feminist theory relevant to my argument about the sexual politics of Bokenham's legendary' (28). The enormous scope ofthis project is apparent from its first chapter, but Delany further divides her categories, particularly in the three chapters on the corporeal bodies of the saints in Bokenham's collection. The three chapters that cover the arthuriana second part ofDelany's taxonomy fragment the saint's bodies into pieces, considering them in the groups suggested by the ordering of the legends in the text. This is a microcosm ofthe whole work, which (in a very medieval way) divides and subdivides, ending up at a conclusion which is titled 'Last Things and Afterlives,' perhaps in recognition ofthe fragmentary nature of the work's argument. This is not a criticism; that Delany rejects a neat summation ofwhat Impolitic Bodies provides prevents her discussion from being reductive, from enclosing what she proves to be a complex and intriguing work in overly-neat categories. What I was left with at the end of her book, apart from a desire to go read Osbern Bokenham myself, was a strong sense of how important a so-called (not by Delany) 'marginal' or 'minor' workmay be, how it can engage its literary, historical, and religious moment in complex ways. Delany...

The Arthurian Art of David Jones

Arthurian romance, especially Malory's Morte Darthur , inspired nine drawings and paintings by David Jones (1895-1974). Because Jones treated imagery in a polysemous medieval way, his art must be read not only literally, as representation of story, but also allegorically, tropologically, and anagogically.

Francesc Eiximenis's dissension with the Royal House of Aragon

In his major work, ti, Francesc Eiximenis expressed beliefs about kings, government, and the common good. At times these opinions contradicted the policies and actions of the kings whom he served. Favouritism in the court was evident after Peter III married Sibil.lia de Fortià and continued on a larger scale when his son John I took power. John created an oligarchy that stifled Peter's political reforms, especially in municipal governments. Not until Maria de Luna's regency and Martin I's reign did Eiximenis begin to feel confidence in the royal family. The shift of power from the Catalan-Aragonese monarchy to the Corts and Consell de Cent of Barcelona brought about a change of interest in government. Peter and his sons turned their attention to the arts, humanities, and sciences, and saw themselves as educated rulers who collected and read legal, historical, and literary works and wrote poetry. However, Eiximenis preferred the military kings of the past who respected the medieval way of life, the parliamentary form of government, and municipal governments.