Medievalists and scholars of mostly French literature, many of them retired from active teaching now, explore mythic dimensions of the cultures, histories, and literatures of the medieval west. Among
"Witnesses to the disappearance of a text, palimpsest manuscripts bear the marks of their own genesis, for their original inscription was rubbed out and written over on the same parchment. Erasure is
To write this history of the imagination, Le Goff has recreated the mental structures of medieval men and women by analyzing the images of man as microcosm and the Church as mystical body; the symbols
This study begins with a brief account of the development of medieval incest laws, and the extent to which they were obeyed. Next comes a survey of classical incest stories and their legacy; many were
In Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages, Michelle Karnes revises the history of medieval imagination with a detailed analysis of its role in the period’s meditations and theories
The secrets of Nature's alchemy and the mysteries of "change" captivated both the scientific and literary imagination of the Middle Ages. Beneath the sphere of the moon in the mediev
The demand for spices in medieval Europe was extravagant and was reflected in the pursuit of fashion, the formation of taste, and the growth of luxury trade. It inspired geographical and commercial e
Genealogies of Fiction is a study of gender, dynastic politics, and intertextuality in medieval and Renaissance chivalric epic, focused on Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando furioso. Relying on the direct stu
This book examines the sustained interest in legends of the pagan and peripheral North, tracing and analyzing the use of an ‘out-of-Scandinavia’ legend (Scandinavia as an ancestral homeland) in a wide
Medieval writers frequently refer to the composition of their own verse and prose works. These authorial interventions are often cryptic and partial, bringing them together, like pieces in a puzzle, r
Our current ecological crises compel us not only to understand how contemporary media shapes our conceptions of human relationships with the environment, but also to examine the historical genealogies of such perspectives. Written during the onset of the Little Ice Age in Britain, Middle English romances provide a fascinating window into the worldviews of popular vernacular literature (and its audiences) at the close of the Middle Ages. Andrew M. Richmond shows how literary conventions of romances shaped and were in turn influenced by contemporary perspectives on the natural world. These popular texts also reveal widespread concern regarding the damaging effects of human actions and climate change. The natural world was a constant presence in the writing, thoughts, and lives of the audiences and authors of medieval English romance – and these close readings reveal that our environmental concerns go back further in our history and culture than we think.
In an effort to make sense of God's apparent abandonment of Christendom in favor of a dynamic and expanding Muslim civilization, European writers distorted the teachings of Islam and caricatured its b
In the first century of Islam, most of the former Christian Roman Empire, from Syria to Spain, was brought under Muslim control in a conquest of unprecedented proportions. Confronted by the world of I
How was the use of violence against Muslims explained and justified in medieval Islam? What role did state punishment play in delineating the private from the public sphere? What strategies were deployed to cope with the suffering caused by punishment? These questions are explored in Christian Lange's in-depth study of the phenomenon of punishment, both divine and human, in eleventh-to-thirteenth-century Islamic society. The book examines the relationship between state and society in meting out justice, Muslim attitudes to hell and the punishments that were in store in the afterlife, and the legal dimensions of punishment. The cross-disciplinary approach embraced in this study, which is based on a wide variety of Persian and Arabic sources, sheds light on the interplay between theory and practice in Islamic criminal law, and between executive power and the religious imagination of medieval Muslim society at large.
How was the use of violence against Muslims explained and justified in medieval Islam? What role did state punishment play in delineating the private from the public sphere? What strategies were deployed to cope with the suffering caused by punishment? These questions are explored in Christian Lange's in-depth study of the phenomenon of punishment, both divine and human, in eleventh-to-thirteenth-century Islamic society. The book examines the relationship between state and society in meting out justice, Muslim attitudes to hell and the punishments that were in store in the afterlife, and the legal dimensions of punishment. The cross-disciplinary approach embraced in this study, which is based on a wide variety of Persian and Arabic sources, sheds light on the interplay between theory and practice in Islamic criminal law, and between executive power and the religious imagination of medieval Muslim society at large.
A highly original and accessible study of Muslim saint veneration in medieval Egypt (1200-1500 AD). Exploring various meanings saints held for the contemporary imagination, it convincingly challenges
