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A.V.C. Schmidt is concerned to rebut the common view of Langland as more concerned with the content of his `message' than with the minutiae of his art. He bases his study on close examination of particular lines and passages which establish convincingly that the poetry of Piers Plowmandemands and deserves the most attentive scrutiny and is inseparable from a proper concern with its structure and themes. In this study of the B-text of Piers PlowmanA.V.C. Schmidt argues that Langland is a writer who combines the Latin learning of a medieval `clerk' with the traditional skills of an alliterative `maker' to create an art unique for its linguistic subtlety and poetic richness. Beginning with an a...
This new translation of the B-text is provided with an Introduction and extensive Notes which place the work in its contemporary setting and offer a full interpretative commentary on the poem.
This book presents an overview together with a detailed examination of the life and ideas of a major thinker and protagonist of the first half of the fourteenth century, Richard FitzRalph (1300-60, Armachanus). A central figure in debates at Oxford, Avignon and Ireland, FitzRalph is perhaps best-known for his central role in the poverty controversies of the 1350s. Each of the chapters collected here sheds a different perspective on the many aspects of FitzRalph’s life and works, from his time at the University of Oxford, his role as preacher and pastoral concerns, his contacts with the Eastern Churches, and finally his case at the Papal court against the privileges granted to the Franciscans. His influence and later reputation is also examined. Contributors include: Michael W. Dunne, Jean-François Genest†, Michael Haren, Elżbieta Jung, Severin V. Kitanov, Stephen Lahey, Monika Michałowska, Simon Nolan O.Carm, Bridget Riley, Chris Schabel, and John T. Slotemaker
Anagnorisis has been called ‘one of the great works of comparative literary criticism of our time’. It is a book that spans the millennia, the adventures of Ulysses in Homer and God’s mysterious appearance to Abraham in Genesis, down not only to Joyce’s Ulysses and Thomas Mann’s Joseph and his Brothers, but also to Dumas’ Count of Montecristo, Borges’s ‘The Immortal’, and Walcott's Omeros. ‘Anagnorisis’ means ‘recognition’. Aristotle defined it simply as ‘the passage from ignorance to knowledge’. But the knowledge one gains in anagnorisis is neither scientific nor abstract – it is living knowledge in the flesh, as Euripides’ Helen understood when, seeing her husband again after many years, she exclaimed: ‘to recognize those we love is a god.
This 2003 study uses evidence from early English verse to reconstruct the course of some central phonological changes in the history of the language. It builds on the premise that alliteration reflects faithfully the acoustic identity and similarity of stressed syllable onsets. Individual chapters cover the history of the velars, the structure and history of vowel-initial syllable onsets, the behaviour of onset clusters, and the chronology and motivation of cluster reduction (gn-, kn-, hr-, hl-, hn-, hw-, wr-, wl-). Examination of the patterns of group alliteration in Old and Middle English reveals a hierarchy of cluster-internal cohesiveness which leads to new conclusions regarding the causes for the special treatment of sp-, st-, sk- in alliteration. The analysis draws on phonetically based Optimality-Theoretic models. The book presents valuable information about the medieval poetic canon and elucidates the relationship between orality and literacy in the evolution of English verse.
Since the publication of Kennedy's monumental Bibliography of Writings on the English Language, no bibliography has systematically surveyed the Old and Middle English scholarship accumulated over the past 60 years. Tajima's work aims to meet the need for an updated bibliography of Old and Middle English language studies; it lists books, monographs, dissertations, articles, notes, and reviews on Old and Middle English language. The items have been listed into fourteen fairly broad categories: (1) Bibliographies, (2) Dictionaries, glossaries and concordances, (3) Histories of the English language, (4) Grammars (historical, Old English and Middle English), (5) General and miscellaneous studies, (6) Language of individual authors or works, (7) Orthography and punctuation, (8) Phonology and phonetics, (9) Morphology, (10) Syntax, (11) Lexicology, lexicography and word-formation, (12) Onomastics, (13) Dialectology, (14) Stylistics.
Author and authorship have become increasingly important concepts in Byzantine literary studies. This volume provides the first comprehensive survey on strategies of authorship in Middle Byzantine literature and investigates the interaction between self-presentation and cultural production in a wide array of genres, providing new insights into how Byzantine intellectuals conceived of their own work and pursuits.
From the visual and textual art of Anglo-Saxon England onwards, images held a surprising power in the Western Christian tradition. Not only did these artistic representations provide images through which to find God, they also held mystical potential, and likewise mystical writing, from the early medieval period onwards, is also filled with images of God that likewise refracts and reflects His glory. This collection of essays introduces the currents of thought and practice that underpin this artistic engagement with Western Christian mysticism, and explores the continued link between art and theology. The book features contributions from an international panel of leading academics, and is di...