Books in the The New Middle Ages series

This book reformulates the master narrative of erotic discourse in medieval literature. Individual chapters offer fresh readings of the nature and claims of erotic attachments in Abelard and Heloise, Marie de France, Jean de Meun, Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer - writers profoundly influenced by Augustine and Ovid.

This study charts relationships between moral claims and audience response in medieval exemplary works by such poets as Chaucer, Gower, Robert Henryson, and several anonymous scribes. In late medieval England, exemplary works make one of the strongest possible claims for the social value of poetic fiction.

This study of medieval women as postcolonial writers defines the literary strategies of subversion by which they authorized their alterity within the dominant tradition.

The articles in this volume, by scholars all pursuing careers in the United States, concern the theoretical approaches and methods of early medieval studies.

In Byzantium there were two overlapping systems of dress: a semiotic one whereby dress was a code for rank and wealth, and a fashion system where dress was based on the desire to look a certain way. This book explains secular dress from the eighth to the twelfth centuries through an examination of painted representations.

In new readings of medieval language attitudes and identities, this book concludes that multilingualism informed masculinist discourses, which were aligned against the vernacular sentiment traditionally attributed to Langland and Chaucer.

This text presents all of the most memorable posts of the medievalist internet phenomenon 'Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog', along with essays on the genesis of the blog itself, the role of blogs in medieval scholarship, and the unique pleasures of studying a time period full of plagues, schisms, and assizes.

The essays create an interdisciplinary conversation about the nature and function of sacred and devotional objects across the globe during the medieval and Early Modern period. Topics include the veneration of relics of the Buddha, the cult of the saints in medieval and early modern Ireland, medieval surveys of pagan and Christian Rome.

Drawing on new historical principles, this book examines literary and historical narratives, legal statutes and records, sermons, lyric poetry, and biblical exegesis circulating in medieval England in order to theorize the figure of the outlaw and uncover the legal, ethical, and social assumptions that underlie the practice of outlawry.

This is the first book to construct a theoretical framework that not only introduces a new way of reading romance writing at large, but more specifically that generates useful critical readings of the specific functions of fairies in individual romance texts.

Maintenance, Meed, and Marriage in Medieval English Literature deftly interrogates the relationship between lord and man in medieval England.

This collection of essays offers fresh analysis of topics in the exciting area of Atlantic World studies. Challenging standard assumptions, the essays advance the argument that the Atlantic Ocean was a region that encompassed ethnic and political boundaries, in which a sub-community shaped by culture and commerce arose.

Considering a wide array of sources, this book reveals the tenacity with which Alfonso II (1162-1196) and his son Peter II (1196-1213) of the Crown of Aragon forged a tighter Mediterranean regional network and augmented their regional success.

This book demonstrates how post-structuralist and psychoanalytic theory can serve to clarify structures of identity and economies of desire in medieval texts.

This collection of original essays repositions medieval literary studies after an era of historicism. By defining our post-historical moment in medieval English literary studies in terms of new possibilities, this collection will have broad appeal to those interested in the English Middle Ages, history, culture, and reading itself.

The varied cultural functions of dress, textiles, and clothwork are used in this collection of essays to examine long-standing assumptions about the Middle Ages.

Skin is a multifarious image in medieval culture: the material basis for forming a sense of self and relation to the world, as well as a powerful literary and visual image. This book explores the presence of skin in medieval literature and culture from a range of literary, religious, aesthetic, historical, medical, and theoretical perspectives.

Explores the representation of emotions as psychological concepts and cultural constructs in Geoffrey Chaucer's narrative poetry. McTaggart argues that Chaucer's main works including The Canterbury Tales are united thematically in their positive view of guilt and in their anxiety about the desire for sacrifice and vengeance that shame can provoke.

Building on recent work in critical animal studies and posthumanism, this book challenges past assumptions that animals were only explored as illustrative of humanity, not as interesting in their own right. The contributors combine close reading of Chaucer's texts with insights drawn from cultural or critical animal studies.

This book asks how, in a time of crisis, medieval citizens developed an independent sense of ethics. Witness testimonies from Marseille's court records offer a small window into the neighborhoods of Marseille and reveal how humble people, often women, used the role of witness to become the arbiters of their communities.

This is the first detailed comparative study of patronage as an instrument of power in the relations between kings and bishops in England and Normandy after the Conquest. Esteemed medievalist Everett U. Crosby considers new perspectives of medieval state-building and the vexed relations between secular and ecclesiastical authority.

Margaret, saint and 11th-century Queen of the Scots, remains an often-cited yet little-understood historical figure. Keene's analysis of sources in terms of both time and place - including her Life of Saint Margaret , translated for the first time - allows for an informed understanding of the forces that shaped this captivating woman.

The letters of Heloise and Abelard will remain one of the great, romantic and intellectual documents of human civilization while they, themselves, are probably second only to Romeo and Juliet in the fame accrued by tragic lovers. Here for the first time in Mart Martin McLaughlin's edition is the complete correspendence with commentary.

Twelve medieval scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including law, literature, and religion address the question: What did it mean to possess a voice - or to be without one - during the Middle Ages? This collection reveals how the philosophy, theology, and aesthetics of the voice inhabit some of the most canonical texts of the Middle Ages.

This book offers the first complete English translation of the poems by the late-medieval German (Tyrolean) Oswald von Wolkenstein (1376/1377-1445). German scholarship and musicologists have long recognized the extraordinary strength and power of Oswald s Middle High German songs, both in terms of his poetic imagery and his musical performance.

No study has been carried out examining the gnostic undercurrents in medieval England. For the first time, Natanela Elias investigates the existence of these gnostic traces, using prominent late medieval English literary works such as Piers Plowman and Confessio Amantis and ultimately shedding light on a previously overlooked religious dimension.

The first-of-its-kind, Games and Gaming in Medieval Literature explores the depth and breadth of games in medieval literature and culture. Chapters span from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, and cover England, France, Denmark, Poland, and Spain, re-examining medieval games in diverse social settings such as the church, court, and household.

The secrets of nature's alchemy captivated both the scientific and literary imagination of the Middle Ages. This book explores Chaucer's fascination with earth's mutability. Gabrovsky reveals that his poetry represents a major contribution to a medieval worldview centered on the philosophy of physics, astronomy, alchemy, and logic.

Although Chaucer is typically labeled as the "Father of English Literature," evidence shows that his work appealed to Europe and specifically European women. Rereading the Canterbury Tales , Thomas argues that Chaucer imagined Anne of Bohemia, wife of famed Richard II, as an ideal reader, an aspect that came to greatly affect his writing.

A literary reading informed by the recent temporal turn in Queer Theory, this book analyzes medieval Biblical drama for themes representing modes of power such as the body, politics, and law. Revitalizing the discussions on medieval drama, Sturges asserts that these dramas were often intended not to teach morality but to resist Christian authority.