The Old French Narrative Lay

The Old French Narrative Lay

Author: Glyn Sheridan Burgess

Publisher: DS Brewer

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 154

ISBN-13: 9780859914789

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Bibliographical guide to the Old French narrative lay, listing editions, translations, critical studies and reviews. This volume presents an analytical bibliography of twenty narrative lays written in French in the late twelfth or early thirteenth centuries - Aristote, Conseil, Cor, Desiré, Doon, Espervier, Espine, Graelent, Guingamor, Haveloc, Ignaure, Lecheor, Mantel, Melion, Nabaret, Oiselet, Ombre, Trot, Tydorel and Tyolet -seeking to provide a complete list of the editions, translations, and substantial studies which have been devoted to them over theyears. The choice of the 20 poems corresponds to Donovan's The Breton Lay, the only synthesis so far available on this topic in English. Most references are accompanied by a summary which analyses their contribution to thetopic under discussion, covering the item's significance and interest, and items found in works of reference and briefer studies forming part of books or articles are included where appropriate. Each individual bibliography is intended to stand independently, with full references given in each case for editions and translation; cross-references to important items found in other parts of the volume are given at the end of each bibliography. The twenty partsare preceded by a general section which lists contributions to more than one lay. Professor GLYN BURGESSteaches in the Department of French at the University of Liverpool.


The Facts on File Companion to the French Novel

The Facts on File Companion to the French Novel

Author: Karen L. Taylor

Publisher: Infobase Publishing

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 497

ISBN-13: 0816074992

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French novels such as "Madame Bovary" and "The Stranger" are staples of high school and college literature courses. This work provides coverage of the French novel since its origins in the 16th century, with an emphasis on novels most commonly studied in high school and college courses in world literature and in French culture and civilization.


The Conversion of Herman the Jew

The Conversion of Herman the Jew

Author: Jean-Claude Schmitt

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2013-04-22

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 0812208757

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Sometime toward the middle of the twelfth century, it is supposed, an otherwise obscure figure, born a Jew in Cologne and later ordained as a priest in Cappenberg in Westphalia, wrote a Latin account of his conversion to Christianity. Known as the Opusculum, this book purportedly by "Herman, the former Jew" may well be the first autobiography to be written in the West after the Confessions of Saint Augustine. It may also be something else entirely. In The Conversion of Herman the Jew the eminent French historian Jean-Claude Schmitt examines this singular text and the ways in which it has divided its readers. Where some have seen it as an authentic conversion narrative, others have asked whether it is not a complete fabrication forged by Christian clerics. For Schmitt the question is poorly posed. The work is at once true and fictional, and the search for its lone author—whether converted Jew or not—fruitless. Herman may well have existed and contributed to the writing of his life, but the Opusculum is a collective work, perhaps framed to meet a specific institutional agenda. With agility and erudition, Schmitt examines the text to explore its meaning within the society and culture of its period and its participation in both a Christian and Jewish imaginary. What can it tell us about autobiography and subjectivity, about the function of dreams and the legitimacy of religious images, about individual and collective conversion, and about names and identities? In The Conversion of Herman the Jew Schmitt masterfully seizes upon the debates surrounding the Opusculum (the text of which is newly translated for this volume) to ponder more fundamentally the ways in which historians think and write.


Poetry and Music in Medieval France

Poetry and Music in Medieval France

Author: Ardis Butterfield

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 9780521622196

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This book, first published in 2003, examines the relationship between poetry and music in medieval France.


Aristocratic Life in Medieval France

Aristocratic Life in Medieval France

Author: John W. Baldwin

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13:

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"Rather than attempting to encompass all of Middle Age Europe, this study selects two writers, Jean Renart and Gerbert de Montreuil, and their four romances. It focuses on the discrete area of northern France during a precise period, 1190-1230. Since Jean and Gerbert framed their fictional stories with contemporary and realistic features that could be recognized by their audiences, their works provide a wealth of detail on aristocratic living."--BOOK JACKET.


Medieval Hagiography

Medieval Hagiography

Author: Thomas Head

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-10-24

Total Pages: 892

ISBN-13: 1317325141

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This collection presents-through the medium of translated sources-a comprehensive guide to the development of hagiography and the cult of the saints in western Christendom during the middle ages. It provides an unparalleled resource for the study of the ideals of sanctity and the practice of religion in the medieval west. Intended for the classroom, for the medieval scholar who wishes to explore sources in unfamiliar languages, and for the general reader fascinated by the saints, this collection provides the reader a chance to explore in depth a full range of writings about the saints (the term hagiography is derived from Greek roots: hagios=holy and graphe=writing). The thirty-six chapters contain sources either in their entirety or in selections of substantial length. The great majority of the texts have never previously appeared in English translation. Those which have appeared in earlier translation, are here presented in versions based on significant new textual and historical scholarship which makes them significant improvements on the earlier versions. All the translations are accompanied by introductions, notes, and suggestions for further reading in order to help guide the reader. The first selections date to the fourth century, when the ideals of Christian sanctity were evolving to meet the demands of a world in which Christianity was an accepted religion and when the public veneration of relics was growing greatly in scope. The last selections date to the period immediately prior to the Reformation, a period in which the traditional concept of sanctity and acceptability of de cult of relics was being questioned. In addition to numerous works from the clerical languages of Latin and Greek, the selections include translations from Romance, Celtic, Germanic, and Slavic vernacular languages, s well as Hebrew texts concerning the martyrdom of Jews at the hands of Christians. Originating in lands from Iceland to Hungary and from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, they are taken from a full range of the many genres which constituted hagiography: lives of the saints, collections of miracle stories, accounts of the discovery or movement of relics, liturgical books, visions, canonization inquests, and even heresy trials.


Medieval Clothing and Textiles

Medieval Clothing and Textiles

Author: Robin Netherton

Publisher: Boydell Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 1843837366

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Pan-European research on medieval clothing and textiles, drawing from a range of disciplines. This volume continues the series' tradition of bringing together work on clothing and textiles from across Europe. It has a strong focus on gold: subjects include sixth-century German burials containing sumptuous jewellery and bands brocaded with gold; the textual evidence for recycling such gold borders and bands in the later Anglo-Saxon period; and a semantic classification of words relating to gold in multi-lingual medieval Britain. It also rescues significant archaeological textiles from obscurity: there is a discussion of early medieval headdresses from The Netherlands, and an examination of a fifteenth-century Italian cushion, an early example of piecework. Finally, uses of dress and textiles in literature are explored in a survey of the Welsh Mabinogion and Jean Renart's Roman de la Rose. Robin Netherton is a professional editor and a researcher/lecturer on the interpretationof medieval European dress; Gale R. Owen-Crocker is Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture at the University of Manchester. Contributors: Brigitte Haas-Gebhard, Britt Nowak-Böck, Maren Clegg Hyer, Louise Sylvester, ChrystelBrandenburgh, Lisa Evans, Patricia Williams, Katherine Talarico.


From Song to Book

From Song to Book

Author: Sylvia Huot

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2019-05-15

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1501746677

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As the visual representation of an essentially oral text, Sylvia Huot points out, the medieval illuminated manuscript has a theatrical, performative quality. She perceives the tension between implied oral performance and real visual artifact as a fundamental aspect of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century poetics. In this generously illustrated volume, Huot examines manuscript texts both from the performance-oriented lyric tradition of chanson courtoise, or courtly love lyric, and from the self-consciously literary tradition of Old French narrative poetry. She demonstrates that the evolution of the lyrical romance and dit, narrative poems which incorporate thematic and rhetorical elements of the lyric, was responsible for a progressive redefinition of lyric poetry as a written medium and the emergence of an explicitly written literary tradition uniting lyric and narrative poetics. Huot first investigates the nature of the vernacular book in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, analyzing organization, page layout, rubrication, and illumination in a series of manuscripts. She then describes the relationship between poetics and manuscript format in specific texts, including works by widely read medieval authors such as Guillaume de Lorris, Jean de Meun, and Guillaume de Machaut, as well as by lesser-known writers including Nicole de Margival and Watriquet de Couvin. Huot focuses on the writers' characteristic modifications of lyric poetics; their use of writing and performance as theme; their treatment of the poet as singer or writer; and of the lady as implied reader or listener; and the ways in which these features of the text were elaborated by scribes and illuminators. Her readings reveal how medieval poets and book-makers conceived their common project, and how they distinguished their respective roles.