First published in 1993. Volume 8 in the 9-volume set of Studies in Medieval Literature, a series of interpretative and analytic studies of the Western European literatures of the Middle Ages. This volume extends the canon of works to be read and studied by providing a new framework for understanding that will inspire students and scholars to look anew at Robert Henryson's poetry. The reader will find it rewarding to read the mainline exposition but will also find a second reward in the knowledge accumulated to support that exposition.
This work studies two medieval translations of Aesop's fables, one in Latin (1497) and one in vernacular Italian (1526), with a close examination of how each translation reflected its audience and its translator. It offers close readings of the "Feast of Tongues" along with six fables common to both texts: "The House Mouse and the Field Mouse," "The Lion and the Mouse," "The Nightingale and the Sparrow Hawk," "The Wolf and the Lamb," "The Fly and the Ant," and "The Donkey and the Lap-Dog." The selected fables highlight imbalances of power, different stations in life, and the central question of "how shall we live?"
This large-scale anthology of early Scottish Literature, now revised, has been designed as a teaching text for use by school and university students. Longer works are either presented complete - e.g. James I, King is Quair; as long extracts with explanatory linking passages - e.g. Urquhart, The Jewel; or by sections which sum up the main themes and concerns of the text-e.g. Barbour's Bruce Book I. There are full critical and linguistic introductions; brief biographical and bibliographical introductions for each author or sub-section; the texts have all been re-edited; every difficult word is glossed, and full explanatory notes appear at the foot of each page. A substantial Appendix presents texts in Latin, Scots, English and Gaelic from the seventeenth century, demonstrating the vitality and interaction of these voices within the Scottish tradition. A noteworthy feature of the book is Professor Jack's Critical Introduction, 'Where Stands Scottish Literature Now?' This challenges many widely-held assumptions about Scottish literature. In particular it seeks to explore the reasons behind the strange neglect of the writers of the seventeenth century. Basing its argument on the texts of the Anthology as a whole, it seeks to re-define the accepted canon and suggests an alternative way of approaching Scottish literary history.
This volume gathers together essays on Scottish literature, diverse in historical period, mode, and form in honour of Professor R.D.S. Jack, Professor Emeritus of English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. Chronologically, the collection sweeps from the early middle ages to the early twentieth century, from Robert Henryson to J.M. Barrie, conveying a sense of the shifting and subtle identities and continuities of Scottish literary traditions across the centuries, and opening up, through a distinctive and unusual range of writers and texts, unfamiliar aesthetic, cultural, and linguistic landscapes. Unusual and wide-ranging in subject and scope, the volume explores Scottish medieval romance and allegory, Renaissance court performance, early modern travel writing, seventeenth-century poetry, Sir Thomas Urquhart’s universal language theory, Scottish Romanticism, Burns and Barrie. Shared threads of interest run through the collection: a questioning of the canonical; attentiveness to questions of language, rhetoric, and form; and a commitment to uncovering the dynamic interaction between European and Scottish traditions. Collectively, the volume charts a new series of imaginative cross-currents across historical periods and literary modes, attesting the importance of, and necessity for, a critical vision of Scottish literature which is pluralistic, comparative, and sensitive to form, mode, and rhetoric.
Invention in Rhetoric and Composition examines issues that have surrounded historical and contemporary theories and pedagogies of rhetorical invention, citing a wide array of positions on these issues in both primary rhetorical texts and secondary interpretations. It presents theoretical disagreements over the nature, purpose, and epistemology of invention and pedagogical debates over such issues as the relative importance of art, talent, imitation, and practice in teaching discourse. After a discussion of treatments of invention from the Sophists to the nineteenth century, Invention in Rhetoric and Composition introduces a range of early twentieth-century multidisciplinary theories and calls for invention's awakening in the field of English studies. It then showcases inventional theories and pedagogies that have emerged in the field of Rhetoric and Composition over the last four decades, including the ensuing research, critiques, and implementations of this inventional work. As a reference guide, the text offers a glossary of terms, an annotated bibliography of selected texts, and an extensive bibliography. Janice M. Lauer is Professor of English, Emerita at Purdue University, where she was the Reece McGee Distinguished Professor of English. In 1998, she received the College Composition and Communication Conference's Exemplar Award. Her publications include Four Worlds of Writing: Inquiry and Action in Context, Composition Research: Empirical Designs, and New Perspectives on Rhetorical Invention, as well as essays on rhetorical invention, disciplinarity, writing as inquiry, composition pedagogy, historical rhetoric, and empirical research.
In this new edition of the poems of Robert Henryson, David Parkinson offers editions of Henryson's Fables, The Testament of Cresseid, Orpheus and Eurydice and twelve shorter poems, grouped according to the strength of their attribution to Henryson, as well as the glosses and explanatory and textual notes characteristic of Middle English Texts Series volumes. Henryson was a prominent Scottish poet writing in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. This edition serves as an excellent addition to the Scots language and late medieval Scottish poetry.
The epics of ancient Greece and Rome are unique in that many went unfinished, or if they were finished, remained open to further narration that was beyond the power, interest, or sometimes the life-span of the poet. Such incompleteness inaugurated a tradition of continuance and closure in their reception. Brill’s Companion to Prequels, Sequels, and Retellings of Classical Epic explores this long tradition of continuing epics through sequels, prequels, retellings and spin-offs. This collection of essays brings together several noted scholars working in a variety of fields to trace the persistence of this literary effort from their earliest instantiations in the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer to the contemporary novels of Ursula K. Le Guin and Margaret Atwood.
Some of the most important authors in British poetry left their mark onliterature before 1600, including Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, and, of course, William Shakespeare. "The Facts On File Companion to British Poetry before 1600"is an encyclopedic guide to British poetry from the beginnings to theyear 1600, featuring approximately 600 entries ranging in length from300 to 2,500 words.
In The Lily and the Thistle, William Calin argues for a reconsideration of the French impact on medieval and renaissance Scottish literature. Calin proposes that much of traditional, medieval, and early modern Scottish culture, thought to be native to Scotland or primarily from England, is in fact strikingly international and European. By situating Scottish works in a broad intertextual context, Calin reveals which French genres and modes were most popular in Scotland and why. The Lily and the Thistle provides appraisals of medieval narrative texts in the high courtly mode (equivalent to the French dits amoureux); comic, didactic, and satirical texts; and Scots romance. Special attention is accorded to texts composed originally in French such as the Arthurian Roman de Fergus, as well as to the lyrics of Mary Queen of Scots and little known writers from the French and Scottish canons. By considering both medieval and renaissance works, Calin is able to observe shifts in taste and French influence over the centuries.
Augustine as a point of departureThis study examines Christian education in early vernacular texts of the German Middle Ages on the basis of Latin traditions of learning and teaching from Late Antiquity. The point of departure is Augustine's De doctrina christiana in which Augustine not only consolidated Christian and pagan traditions but combined them into a program of Christian education. Illuminates continuity of traditionsThe author considers the continuity of these traditions in the late sixth century in Gregory the Great's treatise on pastoral care, Regula pastoralis, the early ninth-century work of Hrabanus Maurus, De institutione clericorum, in the Old High German poem, the Muspilli also from the ninth century, then in the Middle High German works, the Memento Mori from the late 11th century, and the poems of Frau Ava and Von den Letzten Dingen from the early and late 12th century, respectively. Translations of the Latin and early German texts generally appear together with a version of their original texts. A bibliography and index conclude the volume.
