Dialogue Against the Jews

Dialogue Against the Jews

Author: Alfonsi Petrus

Publisher: CUA Press

Published: 2006-10

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 0813213908

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Never before translated into English, this work presents to the reader perhaps the most important source for an intensifying medieval Christian-Jewish debate.


Poetry and Philosophy in the Middle Ages

Poetry and Philosophy in the Middle Ages

Author: John Marenbon

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2001-01-01

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 9789004119642

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A collection of essays written by pupils, friends and colleagues of Professor Peter Dronke, to honour him on his retirement. The essays address the question of the relationship between poetry and philosophy in the Middle Ages. Contributors include Walter Berschin, Charles Burnett, Stephen Gersh, Michael Herren, Edouard Jeauneau, David Luscombe, Paul Gerhardt Schmidt, Joe Trapp, Jill Mann, Claudio Orlandi and John Marenbon. It is an important collection for both philosophical and literary specialists; scholars, graduate students and under-graduates in Medieval Literature and in Medieval Philosophy.


Chaucer's Language and the Philosophers' Tradition

Chaucer's Language and the Philosophers' Tradition

Author: J. D. Burnley

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd

Published: 1979

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 0859910512

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This book is designed to explore the various kinds of association found in Chaucer's lexical usage, and so to alert the reader to the wider implications of particular words and phrases. By concentrating on the `architecture' of the language, Dr Burnley offers what is in some respects an antidote to the skilled contextual glossing of the editor, whose activities may often obscure important connections. Such connections are vital to the interpretation of any work as a whole, and awareness of them is what distinguishes the scholar from the student who can `translate' Chaucer perfectly adequately without being aware of deeper meanings. Even apparently simple words such as l>cruel, mercy/l>and l>pity/l>can often carry subtle echoes and overtones. Dr Burnley is particularly concerned with words which carry some l>conceptual/l>association, and thus with moral stereotypes inherited from classical and early medieval philosophy, which formed the currency of both secular and religious ideals of conduct in the Middle Ages. His prime concern is to identify the themes and symbols and their characteristic language, and thus to provide a firm basis for critical investigation in Chaucer's literary use of this material.


The Matter of Araby in Medieval England

The Matter of Araby in Medieval England

Author: Dorothee Metlitzki

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2005-07-01

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 9780300114102

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To understand the significance of Arabic material in medieval literature, we must recognize the concrete reality of Islam in the medieval European experience. Intimate contacts beginning with the Crusades yielded considerable knowledge about "Araby" beyond the merely stereotypical and propagandistic. Arabian culture was manifest in scientific and philosophical investigations; and the Arab presence pervaded medieval romance, where caricatures of Saracens were not merely a catering to popular taste but were a way of coping emotionally with a real threat. In England as well as in continental Europe, Islam figured in the best intellectual efforts of the age. Dorothee Metlitzki considers "Scientific and Philosophical Learning" in Part One of this book and discusses the transmission of Arabian culture, by way of the Crusades, and through the courts of Sicily and Spain. She sees the work of Latin translators from the Arabic in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as the background of a medieval heritage of learning that expressed itself in the subject matter, theme, and imagery not only of a scholar-poet like Chaucer but also of the poets of popular romance. In Part Two, "The Literary Heritage," Metlitzki deals with Arabian source books, with Araby in history and romance, and with Mandeville's Travels. She concludes with a general assessment of the cultural force of Araby in England during the middle Ages.


The Book of Count Lucanor and Patronio

The Book of Count Lucanor and Patronio

Author: Juan Manuel

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2021-10-21

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 0813186250

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Don Juan Manuel, nephew of King Alfonso X, The Wise, knew well the appeal of exempla (moralized tales), which he believed should entertain if they were to provide ways and means for solving life's problems. His fourteenth-century book, known as El Conde lucanor, is considered by many to be the purest Spanish prose before the immortal Don Quixote of Cervantes written two centuries later. He found inspiration for his tales in classical and eastern literatures, Spanish history, and folklore. His stories are not translations, but are his retelling of some of the best stories in existence. The translation succeeds in making the author speak as clearly to the modern reader as to readers of his own time.


Boccaccio's Fabliaux

Boccaccio's Fabliaux

Author: Katherine A. Brown

Publisher: University Press of Florida

Published: 2020-04-02

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 0813065615

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"A remarkably well-informed and truly innovative study of the way Boccaccio reimagined and rewrote Old French fabliaux in his Decameron."—François Rigolot, Princeton University "Theoretically savvy, and yet jargon-free, philologically impeccable and critically acute, this is a book that shows the author’s unflinching dedication to the highest standards of scholarship."—Simone Marchesi, author of Dante and Augustine "Brown’s attention to codicological contexts coupled with persuasive new interpretations of some of the fabliaux and Decameron stories make this book a pleasure to read for medievalist veterans and novices alike."—Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, author of Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378-1417 Short works known for their humor and ribaldry, the fabliaux were comic or satirical tales told by wandering minstrels in medieval France. Although the fabliaux are widely acknowledged as inspiring Giovanni Boccaccio’s masterpiece, the Decameron, this theory has never been substantiated beyond perceived commonalities in length and theme. This new and provocative interpretation examines the formal similarities between the Decameron’s tales of wit, wisdom, and practical jokes and the popular thirteenth-century fabliaux. Katherine Brown examines these works through a prism of reversal and chiasmus to show that Boccaccio was not only inspired by the content of the fabliaux but also by their fundamental design--where a passage of truth could be read as a lie or a tale of life as a tale of death. Brown reveals close resemblances in rhetoric, literary models, and narrative structure to demonstrate how the Old French manuscripts of the fabliaux were adapted in the organization of the Decameron. Identifying specific examples of fabliaux transformed by Boccaccio for his classic Decameron, Brown shows how Boccaccio refashioned borrowed literary themes and devices, playing with endless possibilities of literary creation through manipulations of his model texts. Katherine A. Brown is a specialist of medieval French and Italian literature.


Marginal Voices

Marginal Voices

Author: Amy I. Aronson-Friedman

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2012-02-03

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 9004222588

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The conversos of late medieval and Golden Age Spain were Christians whose Jewish ancestors had been forced to change faiths within a society that developed a preoccupation with pure Christian lineage. The aims of this book is to shed new light on the cultural impact of this social climate, in which public suspicion of the religious sincerity of conversos became widespread and scrutiny by the Inquisition came to impede social advancement and threaten life and property. The bulk of the essays center on literary works, including lesser known and canonical pieces, which are analyzed by scholars who reveal the heterogeneous nature of textual voices that are informed by an awareness of the marginal status of conversos. Contributors are Gregory B. Kaplan, Ana Benito, Patricia Timmons, David Wacks, Bruce Rosenstock, Laura Delbrugge, Michelle Hamilton, Deborah Skolnik Rosenberg, Kevin Larsen and Luis Bejarano.