Hrafnkel Or the Ambiguities

Hrafnkel Or the Ambiguities

Author: William Ian Miller

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 0198793030

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William Ian Miller presents a close reading of one of the best known of the Icelandic sagas, showing its moral, political, and psychological sophistication. His account of this complex and nuanced saga corrects simplistic readings which have governed interpretation of the saga in the past.


Emotion, Violence, Vengeance and Law in the Middle Ages

Emotion, Violence, Vengeance and Law in the Middle Ages

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-05-01

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 9004366377

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Contributions to this Festschrift for the renowned American legal and literary scholar William Ian Miller reflect the extraordinary intellectual range of the honorand, who is equally at home discussing legal history, Icelandic sagas, English literature, anger and violence, and contemporary popular culture. Professor Miller's colleagues and former students, including distinguished academic lawyers, historians, and literary scholars from the United States, Canada, and Europe, break important new ground by bringing little-known sources to a wider audience and by shedding new light on familiar sources through innovative modes of analysis. Contributors are Stuart Airlie, Theodore M. Andersson, Nora Bartlett, Robert Bartlett, Jordan Corrente Beck, Carol J. Clover, Lauren DesRosiers, William Eves, John Hudson, Elizabeth Papp Kamali, Kimberley-Joy Knight, Simon MacLean, M.W. McHaffie, Eva Miller, Hans Jacob Orning, Jamie Page, Susanne Pohl-Zucker, Amanda Strick, Helle Vogt, Mark D. West, and Stephen D. White.


Outrageous Fortune

Outrageous Fortune

Author: William Ian Miller

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-11-02

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 0197530699

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In this book, William Ian Miller offers his reflections on the perverse consequences, indeed often the opposite of intended effects, of so-called 'good things'. Noted for his remarkable erudition, wit, and playful pessimism, Miller here ranges over topics from personal disasters to literary and national ones. Drawing on a truly immense store of knowledge encompassing literature, philosophy, theology, and history, he excavates the evidence of human anxieties around scarcity in all its forms (from scarcity of food to luck to where we stand in the eyes of others caught in a game of musical chairs we often do not even know we are playing). With wit and sensitivity, along with a large measure of fearless self-scrutiny, he points to and invites us to recognize the gloomy, neurotic, despondent tendencies of reasonably sentient human life. The book is a careful examination of negative beliefs, inviting an experience of bleak fellow-feeling among the author, the reader and many a hapless soul across the centuries. Just what makes you more nervous, he asks, a run of good luck, or a run of bad?


Emotional Alterity in the Medieval North Sea World

Emotional Alterity in the Medieval North Sea World

Author: Erin Sebo

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-09-25

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 3031339657

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This book addresses a little-considered aspect of the study of the history of emotions in medieval literature: the depiction of perplexing emotional reactions. Medieval literature often confronts audiences with displays of emotion that are improbable, physiologically impossible, or simply unfathomable in modern social contexts. The intent of such episodes is not always clear; medieval texts rarely explain emotional responses or their motivations. The implication is that the meanings communicated by such emotional display were so obvious to their intended audience that no explanation was required. This raises the question of whether such meanings can be recovered. This is the task to which the contributors to this book have put themselves. In approaching this question, this book does not set out to be a collection of literary studies that treat portrayals of emotion as simple tropes or motifs, isolated within their corpora. Rather, it seeks to uncover how such manifestations of feeling may reflect cultural and social dynamics underlying vernacular literatures from across the medieval North Sea world.


Bloodtaking and Peacemaking

Bloodtaking and Peacemaking

Author: William Ian Miller

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009-05-15

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 0226526828

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Dubbed by the New York Times as "one of the most sought-after legal academics in the county," William Ian Miller presents the arcane worlds of the Old Norse studies in a way sure to attract the interest of a wide range of readers. Bloodtaking and Peacemaking delves beneath the chaos and brutality of the Norse world to discover a complex interplay of ordering and disordering impulses. Miller's unique and engaging readings of ancient Iceland's sagas and extensive legal code reconstruct and illuminate the society that produced them. People in the saga world negotiated a maze of violent possibility, with strategies that frequently put life and limb in the balance. But there was a paradox in striking the balance—one could not get even without going one better. Miller shows how blood vengeance, law, and peacemaking were inextricably bound together in the feuding process. This book offers fascinating insights into the politics of a stateless society, its methods of social control, and the role that a uniquely sophisticated and self-conscious law played in the construction of Icelandic society. "Illuminating."—Rory McTurk, Times Literary Supplement "An impressive achievement in ethnohistory; it is an amalgam of historical research with legal and anthropological interpretation. What is more, and rarer, is that it is a pleasure to read due to the inclusion of narrative case material from the sagas themselves."—Dan Bauer, Journal of Interdisciplinary History


Outrageous Fortune

Outrageous Fortune

Author: William Ian Miller

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-11-02

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0197530702

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In this book, William Ian Miller offers his reflections on the perverse consequences, indeed often the opposite of intended effects, of so-called 'good things'. Noted for his remarkable erudition, wit, and playful pessimism, Miller here ranges over topics from personal disasters to literary and national ones. Drawing on a truly immense store of knowledge encompassing literature, philosophy, theology, and history, he excavates the evidence of human anxieties around scarcity in all its forms (from scarcity of food to luck to where we stand in the eyes of others caught in a game of musical chairs we often do not even know we are playing). With wit and sensitivity, along with a large measure of fearless self-scrutiny, he points to and invites us to recognize the gloomy, neurotic, despondent tendencies of reasonably sentient human life. The book is a careful examination of negative beliefs, inviting an experience of bleak fellow-feeling among the author, the reader and many a hapless soul across the centuries. Just what makes you more nervous, he asks, a run of good luck, or a run of bad?


Law | Book | Culture in the Middle Ages

Law | Book | Culture in the Middle Ages

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-02-01

Total Pages: 477

ISBN-13: 9004448659

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Law | Book | Culture in the Middle Ages takes a detailed view on the role of manuscripts and the written word in legal cultures, spanning the medieval period across western and central Europe.


The Oxford Guide to Arthurian Literature and Legend

The Oxford Guide to Arthurian Literature and Legend

Author: Alan Lupack

Publisher: Oxford Quick Reference

Published: 2007-04-26

Total Pages: 514

ISBN-13:

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The Oxford Guide to Arthurian Literature and Legend offers a comprehensive survey of the Arthurian legends in all their manifestations, from the earliest medieval texts to their appearances in contemporary culture. Essential reading for Arthurian scholars, medievalists, and for those interested in myth and legend.


Art, Craft, and Theology in Fourth-Century Christian Authors

Art, Craft, and Theology in Fourth-Century Christian Authors

Author: Morwenna Ludlow

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-09-29

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0192588656

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Ancient authors commonly compared writing with painting. The sculpting of the soul was also a common philosophical theme. Art, Craft, and Theology in Fourth-Century Christian Authors takes its starting-point from such figures to recover a sense of ancient authorship as craft. The ancient concept of craft (ars, techne) spans 'high' or 'fine' art and practical or applied arts. It unites the beautiful and the useful. It includes both skills or practices (like medicine and music) and productive arts like painting, sculpting and the composition of texts. By using craft as a guiding concept for understanding fourth Christian authorship, this book recovers a sense of them engaged in a shared practice which is both beautiful and theologically useful, which shapes souls but which is also engaged in the production of texts. It focuses on Greek writers, especially the Cappadocians (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nysa) and John Chrysostom, all of whom were trained in rhetoric. Through a detailed examination of their use of two particular literary techniques—ekphrasis and prosōpopoeia—it shows how they adapt and experiment with them, in order to make theological arguments and in order to evoke a response from their readership.


Battle Beyond Kurukshetra

Battle Beyond Kurukshetra

Author: P.K. Balakrishnan

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-01-25

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 0199093229

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Light from the fire burning afar mingled with the moonlight in Kurukshetra to create a terrible twilight. Scattered corpses ... broken chariots ... sporadic death cries ... prowling scavengers ... the battlefield stretched endlessly.The victorious Pāndava camps burst into deafening cheers amidst burning funeral pyres. The Great War was finally over. But soon enough, when everyone learns the truth about the hated enemy, Karna, that towering figure with the golden glow, another battle starts. Everyone stands stunned, forgetting to even cry. Torn by the guilt of fratricide, Yudhishtira becomes a recluse. Draupadi becomes restless: her tryst with reality begins. What seemed a justifiable end to an ignominious character completely overturns. Her pride for her husbands’ valour erodes. Life as she had understood slowly begins to lose meaning. This Malayalam classic centres on Karna, the most criticized yet admired character of the Mahabharata, treacherously killed by his half-brother Arjuna. His life story unfolds through the eyes of Draupadi, in flashbacks and tales she hears from those around her in the aftermath of the battle of Kurukshetra.