You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Argues that the 13th-century French poem can best be understood not by trying to resolve or choosing among the diverse meanings within it or among the myriad of interpretations by scholars and medieval and modern readers, but to accept those differences and reflect on our own willingness to accept to reject those meanings as a guide for a love or morality. Paper edition (unseen), $17.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Since the Roman de la Rose had tremendous influence on the poetry of the fourteenth century, particularly on the works of Deschamps, Machaut, Froissart, and Chaucer, Professor Fleming maintains that it is important for the modern reader to understand what this influential moral satire meant to readers of the medieval period. Basing his interpretation in part on iconographic analysis of the illuminations found in more than one hundred manuscript copies of the poem, he advances a "medieval" reading of the poem. Other tools used by Mr. Fleming to get at the meaning of the poem include a study of the mythographic tradition, a logical and rhetorical analysis of the text, and an examination of for...
A detailed study of Chaucer's fascination with communication as a reciprocal process between speaker and listener', which considers the importance of discourse for social order and the ways in which Chaucer used it against authority.
With over 750 illustrations, Roman Buildings is a thorough and systematic examination of Roman architecture and building practice, looking at large-scale public buildings as well as more modest homes and shops. Placing emphasis on the technical aspects of the subject, the author follows the process of building through each stage -- from quarry to standing wall, from tree to roof timbers -- and describes how these materials were obtained or manufactured. The author also discusses interior decoration and looks at the practical aspects of water supply, heating and roads.
Arguably the single most influential literary work of the European Middle Ages, the Roman de la Rose of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun has traditionally posed a number of difficulties to modern critics, who have viewed its many interruptions and philosophical discussions as signs of a lack of formal organization and a characteristically medieval predilection for encyclopedic summation. In Fortune's Faces, Daniel Heller-Roazen calls into question these assessments, offering a new and compelling interpretation of the romance as a carefully constructed and far-reaching exploration of the place of fortune, chance, and contingency in literary writing. Situating the Romance of the Rose at th...
Fiction has become nearly synonymous with literature itself, as if Homer and Dante and Pynchon were all engaged in the same basic activity. But one difficulty with this view is simply that a literature trafficking in openly invented characters is a quite recent development. Novelists before the nineteenth century ceaselessly asserted that their novels were true stories, and before that, poets routinely took their basic plots and heroes from the past. We have grown accustomed to thinking of the history of literature and the novel as a progression from the ideal to the real. Yet paradoxically, the modern triumph of realism is also the triumph of a literature that has shed all pretense to liter...
This book has a twofold purpose. First, it seeks to define the place of vernacular translation within the systems of rhetoric and hermeneutics in the Middle Ages. Secondly, it examines the way that rhetoric and hermeneutics in the Middle Ages define their status in relation to each other as critical practices. --introd.
At the beginning of the twelfth century, the region around Paris had a reputation for being the land of unruly aristocrats. Entrenched within their castles, the nobles were viewed as quarrelling among themselves, terrorizing the countryside, harassing churchmen and peasants, pillaging, and committing unspeakable atrocities. By the end of the century, during the reign of Philip Augustus, the situation was dramatically different. The king had created the principal governmental organs of the Capetian monarchy and replaced the feudal magnates at the royal court with loyal men of lesser rank. The major castles had been subdued and peace reigned throughout the countryside. The aristocratic familie...