The Poems of Oswald Von Wolkenstein
The Poems of Oswald Von Wolkenstein

Author: Albrecht Classen

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2008-12-08

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 0230617174

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This book offers the first complete English translation of the poems by the late-medieval German (Tyrolean) Oswald von Wolkenstein (1376/1377-1445). Oswald von Wolkenstein was one of the leading poets of his time and created some of the most exciting, experimental, and also deeply religious-conservative poetry of the entire Middle Ages and far beyond. 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. This book proves Oswald's uvre to be one of the most idiosyncratic and individualistic in the entire late Middle Ages. Classen reveals how Oswald continued the medieval tradition, yet was a true innovator, exploring new attitudes toward love, sexuality, travel, war, politics, language, music, and, above all, his own individuality.

Urban Space in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age
Urban Space in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age

Author: Albrecht Classen

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 769

ISBN-13: 3110223899

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Although the city as a central entity did not simply disappear with the Fall of the Roman Empire, the development of urban space at least since the twelfth century played a major role in the history of medieval and early modern mentality within a social-economic and religious framework. Whereas some poets projected urban space as a new utopia, others simply reflected the new significance of the urban environment as a stage where their characters operate very successfully. As today, the premodern city was the locus where different social groups and classes got together, sometimes peacefully, sometimes in hostile terms. The historical development of the relationship between Christians and Jews, for instance, was deeply determined by the living conditions within a city. By the late Middle Ages, nobility and bourgeoisie began to intermingle within the urban space, which set the stage for dramatic and far-reaching changes in the social and economic make-up of society. Legal-historical aspects also find as much consideration as practical questions concerning water supply and sewer systems. Moreover, the early modern city within the Ottoman and Middle Eastern world likewise finds consideration. Finally, as some contributors observe, the urban space provided considerable opportunities for women to carve out a niche for themselves in economic terms.

Female Beauty Systems
Female Beauty Systems

Author: Christine Adams

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2015-09-04

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 1443881430

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Female beauty systems everywhere are complex, integrating markers of class, status, power, and sexuality to perform the fundamental function of sorting individuals into categories of “more” or “less” desirable. Heirs to the tradition of courtly love, modern western female beauty systems tend to share the norm of man as pursuer, woman as pursued, having developed around the trope of the madly-desiring poet or knight supplicating his aloof and lovely lady for her favor. The apparent longevity of the courtly love tradition raises the question of whether the way in which it structures male desire in reaction to female beauty is part of a “universal” tendency, an evolutionary adaptation, despite clear evidence that female beauty systems are also, in fact, socially constructed, and reflect enormous ambivalence about the power and performance of beauty. Although modern western female beauty systems are routinely demystified and contested today, the purveyors of culture that support them—institutional, intellectual, artistic, commercial, and popular—continue as they always have to construe women as objects of male desire. Still, within this basic structure, the systems have varied greatly across time and space, with women using beauty as a form of social capital in widely differing ways. Moreover, as individuals have begun to experience their bodies as malleable and endlessly transformable, rather than unruly and unyielding, many have begun to experience beauty less as a given and more as a project. The nine essays collected here examine a number of different Western female beauty systems over the centuries, considering how women have complied with, contributed to, profited or suffered from, and resisted them.

Freedom, Imprisonment, and Slavery in the Pre-Modern World
Freedom, Imprisonment, and Slavery in the Pre-Modern World

Author: Albrecht Classen

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2021-04-19

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 3110731797

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Contrary to common assumptions, medieval and early modern writers and poets often addressed the high value of freedom, whether we think of such fable authors as Marie de France or Ulrich Bonerius. Similarly, medieval history knows of numerous struggles by various peoples to maintain their own freedom or political independence. Nevertheless, as this study illustrates, throughout the pre-modern period, the loss of freedom could happen quite easily, affecting high and low (including kings and princes) and there are many literary texts and historical documents that address the problems of imprisonment and even enslavement (Georgius of Hungary, Johann Schiltberger, Hans Ulrich Krafft, etc.). Simultaneously, philosophers and theologians discussed intensively the fundamental question regarding free will (e.g., Augustine) and political freedom (e.g., John of Salisbury). Moreover, quite a large number of major pre-modern poets spent a long time in prison where they composed some of their major works (Boethius, Marco Polo, Charles d'Orléans, Thomas Malory, etc.). This book brings to light a vast range of relevant sources that confirm the existence of this fundamental and impactful discourse on freedom, imprisonment, and enslavement.

Heresy and the Making of European Culture
Heresy and the Making of European Culture

Author: Andrew P. Roach

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-22

Total Pages: 505

ISBN-13: 131712250X

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Scholars and analysts seeking to illuminate the extraordinary creativity and innovation evident in European medieval cultures and their afterlives have thus far neglected the important role of religious heresy. The papers collected here - reflecting the disciplines of history, literature, theology, philosophy, economics and law - examine the intellectual and social investments characteristic of both deliberate religious dissent such as the Cathars of Languedoc, the Balkan Bogomils, the Hussites of Bohemia and those who knowingly or unknowingly bent or broke the rules, creating their own 'unofficial orthodoxies'. Attempts to understand, police and eradicate all these, through methods such as the Inquisition, required no less ingenuity. The ambivalent dynamic evident in the tensions between coercion and dissent is still recognisable and productive in the world today.

Rural Space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age
Rural Space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age

Author: Albrecht Classen

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2012-05-29

Total Pages: 932

ISBN-13: 3110285428

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Older research on the premodern world limited its focus on the Church, the court, and, more recently, on urban space. The present volume invites readers to consider the meaning of rural space, both in light of ecocritical readings and social-historical approaches. While previous scholars examined the figure of the peasant in the premodern world, the current volume combines a large number of specialized studies that investigate how the natural environment and the appearance of members of the rural population interacted with the world of the court and of the city. The experience in rural space was important already for writers and artists in the premodern era, as the large variety of scholarly approaches indicates. The present volume signals how much the surprisingly close interaction between members of the aristocratic and of the peasant class determined many literary and art-historical works. In a surprisingly large number of cases we can even discover elements of utopia hidden in rural space. We also observe how much the rural world was a significant element already in early-medieval mentality. Moreover, as many authors point out, the impact of natural forces on premodern society was tremendous, if not catastrophic.

The Cambridge History of Fifteenth-Century Music
The Cambridge History of Fifteenth-Century Music

Author: Anna Maria Busse Berger

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-07-16

Total Pages: 1058

ISBN-13: 1316298299

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Through forty-five creative and concise essays by an international team of authors, this Cambridge History brings the fifteenth century to life for both specialists and general readers. Combining the best qualities of survey texts and scholarly literature, the book offers authoritative overviews of central composers, genres, and musical institutions as well as new and provocative reassessments of the work concept, the boundaries between improvisation and composition, the practice of listening, humanism, musical borrowing, and other topics. Multidisciplinary studies of music and architecture, feasting, poetry, politics, liturgy, and religious devotion rub shoulders with studies of compositional techniques, musical notation, music manuscripts, and reception history. Generously illustrated with figures and examples, this volume paints a vibrant picture of musical life in a period characterized by extraordinary innovation and artistic achievement.

Fifteenth-Century Studies 37
Fifteenth-Century Studies 37

Author: Barbara I. Gusick

Publisher: Camden House

Published: 2012-03

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 157113526X

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Annual collection on diverse aspects of the fifteenth century, emphasizing literary topics with essays on French, German, English, Gaelic, and Middle Scots. The fifteenth century defies consensus on fundamental issues; most scholars agree, however, that the period outgrew the Middle Ages, that it was a time of transition and a passage to modern times. Fifteenth-Century Studiesoffers essays on diverse aspects of the period, including liberal and fine arts, historiography, medicine, and religion. Volume 37 includes articles on René d'Anjou and authorial doubling in the Livre du Coeur d'Amour épris; tradition and innovation in popular German song poetry from Oswald von Wolkenstein to Georg Forster; the role of sacred images in Capgrave's Life of Saint Katherine; milieu, John Strecche, and the Gawain-poet; Gaelic, Middle Scots, and the question of ethnicity in three Scottish flytings; William Caxton's translations of Aesop; the visualization of information in Conrad Buitzruss's compendium; and Gilles de Rais and his modern apologists. Book reviews conclude the volume. Contributors: Albrecht Classen, Nicholas Ealy, Richard Garrett, Rosanne Gasse, Janice McCoy, Jacqueline Murdock, Ben Parsons, Carolyn King Stephens, Elizabeth Wade-Sirabian. BARBARA I. GUSICK is Professor Emerita of English at Troy University, Dothan, Alabama; MATTHEW Z. HEINTZELMAN is curator of the Austria/Germany Study Center and Rare Book Cataloger at Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, Saint John's University, Collegeville, Minnesota.