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"The present volume [3] is the first to appear of the five that will comprise The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature (henceforth OHCREL). Each volume of OHCREL will have its own editor or team of editors"--Preface.
From the beginning of the Christian era and throughout the Middle Ages, biblical interpretation was the field where theological, philosophical and political matters were discussed. At the same time Scripture’s interpretation required the exploration of hermeneutical positions about how a literal and a hidden meaning could be established and how they related to each other. Ranging from early-Christian concerns about the text of the Bible itself, via Carolingian biblical commentaries, and the ever more diverse interpretations from the twelfth century and onwards, to the literary implications of (Jewish) commentary, the articles in this volume examine biblical exegesis both as a discourse on theology, philosophy and politics, and as the context for discussions on its underlying interpretative principles. Contributors are J. K. Kitchen, Katja Vehlow, Caroline Chevalier-Royet, Sumi Shimahara, Ian Christopher Levy, Pierre Boucaud, Elisabeth Mégier, Cédric Giraud, Wanda Zemler-Cizewski, Ineke van ’t Spijker, Eva De Visscher, Alexander Fidora, Frans van Liere, and Robert A. Harris.
In fourteenth-century Italy, literacy became accessible to a significantly larger portion of the lay population (allegedly between 60 and 80 percent in Florence) and provided a crucial means for the vernacularization and secularization of learning, and for the democratization of citizenship. Dante Alighieri's education and oeuvre sit squarely at the heart of this historical and cultural transition and provide an ideal case study for investigating the impact of Latin education on the consolidation of autonomous vernacular literature in the Middle Ages, a fascinating and still largely unexamined phenomenon. On the basis of manuscript and archival evidence, Gianferrari reconstructs the contents...
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This book is the first study to focus on a metaliterary interpretation of Maximianus’ Elegies, and aims to fill a major gap in international literature concerning the thoughts of the last love elegist on the evolution and renovation of the genre of love elegy during Late Antiquity. The book includes all known subjects of Maximianus’ poetry (e.g., the division of his work into six elegies, its attribution to Cornelius Gallus by Pomponius Gauricus in 1502, its reception in recent years, the intellectual milieu of the Ostrogothic Italy, the historical contextualization of his poetry, the Appendix Maximiani, the impact of the Augustan love elegy (and especially Ovid’s) upon it, etc.), in o...
Cicero has indeed refused to die, despite the fact that he, in the year 43 BC, was savagely put to death, a preposterous event that brought an end to the long and illustrious career of a lawyer, politician, statesman, praetor, consul, and above all, intellectual, philosopher, writer. His works on The Ideal Orator, On Law, On Academic Life, On Supreme Good and Evil, The Nature of Gods, Foretelling the Future, Destiny, and Duties constituted the basis of a thorough study of Latin for many centuries of students. One might also, however, conclude that, with the virtual disappearance of Latin as a language that is commonly taught, Cicero might be seen to have suffered a second death; but this is by no means the case. This timely volume explores the many aspects of Ciceronian influence through the Middle Ages—and beyond—on education, literature, and legal training. Contributors are Christopher S. Celenza, Frank Coulson, Nancy van Deusen, George L. Gorse, Michael Herren, Leonard Michael Koff, Valery Rees, Timothy A. Shonk, Terence Tunberg, and John O. Ward.
The Cosmographia is one of the most inventive and enigmatic works of medieval literature. Mark Kauntze argues that this allegory of creation is best understood as a product of the vibrant intellectual culture of twelfth-century France. Bernard Silvestris established the authority of his treatise by imitating those ancient philosophers and poets who were assiduously studied in the contemporary schools. But he also revised and updated them, to develop a compelling intervention into twelfth-century debates about man's place in nature and the relationship between theology and natural science. Using a wealth of manuscript evidence, Kauntze reconstructs the school context in which Bernard worked, and shows how the Cosmographia itself became an object of scholarly annotation and imitation in the later Middle Ages.
The Old French fabliaux may be notorious for their bawdy content, but few aspects of these medieval comic narratives are as astonishing as their depiction of the parish priest, whose fiscal and sexual transgressions are on occasion so enormous that lay protagonists are driven to inflict graphic punishments ranging from public exposure and communal beating to castration and murder. In this study, Burrows draws on social psychological research into the cognitive and socio-motivational components of stereotyping to explore the forces underlying the creation and development of the fabliau priest. Through an assessment of the constituent elements of the figure against a background of a range of literary and historical sources, Burrows demonstrates that the literary figure is the product of the specific socio-historical context of contemporaneous changes in relationships between Church and laity in which anticlerical stereotyping, in a manner comparable to other instances of outgroup derogation, can be attributed to a quest for positive social identity and ingroup solidarity on the part of an inscribed lay audience.