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Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377) was the master poet of fourteenth-century France. He established models for much of the vernacular poetry written by subsequent generations, and he was instrumental in institutionalizing the lay reader. In particular, his longest and most important work, the Voir dit, calls attention to the coexistence of public and private reading practices through its intensely hybrid form: sixty-three poems and ten songs invite an oral performance, while forty-six private prose letters as well as elaborate illustration and references to it's own materiality promote a physical encounter with the book. In Controlling Readers, Deborah McGrady uses Machaut's corpus as a case s...
The ubiquity of references to dogs in medieval and early modern texts and images must at some level reflect their actual presence in those worlds, yet scholarly consideration of this material is rare and scattered across diverse sources. This volume addresses that gap, bringing together fifteen essays that examine the appearance, meaning, and significance of dogs in painting, sculpture, manuscripts, literature, and legal records of the period, reaching beyond Europe to include cultural material from medieval Japan and Islam. While primarily art historical in focus, the authors approach the subject from a range of disciplines and with varying methodology that ultimately reveals as much about dogs as about the societies in which they lived. Contributors are Kathleen Ashley, Jane Carroll, Emily Cockayne, John Block Friedman, Karen M. Gerhart, Laura D. Gelfand, Craig A. Gibson, Walter S. Gibson, Nathan Hofer, Jane C. Long, Judith W. Mann, Sophie Oosterwijk, Elizabeth Carson Pastan, Donna L. Sadler, Alexa Sand, and Janet Snyder.
The best new research on medieval clothing and textiles, drawing from a range of disciplines and with a special focus on reconstruction.
Remembering Boethius explores the rich intersection between the reception of Boethius and the literary construction of aristocratic identity, focusing on a body of late-medieval vernacular literature that draws on the Consolation of Philosophy to represent and reimagine contemporary experiences of exile and imprisonment. Elizabeth Elliott presents new interpretations of English, French, and Scottish texts, including Machaut's Confort d'ami, Remede de Fortune, and Fonteinne amoureuse, Jean Froissart's Prison amoureuse, Thomas Usk's Testament of Love, and The Kingis Quair, reading these texts as sources contributing to the development of the reader's moral character. These writers evoke Boethi...
Gifts and Exchange Andrew Cowell Swords, Clubs and Relics: Performance, Identity and the Sacred Deborah McGrady 'Tout son païs m'abandonna': Reinventing Patronage in Machaut's Fonteinne amoureuse Margaret Burland Narrative Objects and Living Stories in Galeran de Bretagne Images and Portraits Peggy McCracken Miracles, Mimesis, and the Efficacy of Images Alexa Sand Vision and the Portrait of Jean le Bon Cynthia Brown Books in Performance: The Parisian Entry (1504) and Funeral (1514) of Anne of Brittany Ann Rosalind Jones Habits, Holdings, Heterologies: Populations in Print in a 1562 Costume Book George Hoffmann Montaigne's Nudes: The Lost Tower Paintings Rediscovered Plans and Procedures Jeff Persels Taking the Piss out of Pantagruel: Urine and Micturition in Rabelais David LaGuardia Interrogation and the Performance of Truth in the Registre Criminel du Châtelet de Paris Andrea Tarnowski Material Examples: Philippe de Mézières's Order of the Passion Michael Randall Sword and Subject in Du Haillan's Histoire de France (1576)
Remembering Boethius explores the rich intersection between the reception of Boethius and the literary construction of aristocratic identity, focusing on a body of late-medieval vernacular literature that draws on the Consolation of Philosophy to represent and reimagine contemporary experiences of exile and imprisonment. Elizabeth Elliott presents new interpretations of English, French, and Scottish texts, including Machaut's Confort d'ami, Remede de Fortune, and Fonteinne amoureuse, Jean Froissart's Prison amoureuse, Thomas Usk's Testament of Love, and The Kingis Quair, reading these texts as sources contributing to the development of the reader's moral character. These writers evoke Boethi...
This concise companion provides a succinct introduction to Chaucer’s major works, the contexts in which he wrote, and to medieval thought more generally. Opens with a general introductory section discussing London life and politics, books and authority, manuscripts and readers. Subsequent sections focus on Chaucer’s major works – the dream visions, Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales. Essays highlight the key religious, political and intellectual contexts for each major work. Also covers important general topics, including: medieval literary genres; dream theory; the Church; gender and sexuality; and reading Chaucer aloud. Designed so that each contextual essay can be read alongside one of Chaucer’s major works.
- provides the first comprehensive overview of the critical history of Book of the Duchess - offers for the first time a thorough analysis of Book of the Duchess’s medieval and early modern reception - establishes Book of the Duchess’s structuring investment in the idea of ‘the book’ – its construction, consumption, and transmission - as it contributes to a poetics of intertextuality
The best new research on medieval clothing and textiles, drawing from a range of disciplines. The essays collected here continue the Journal's wide-ranging and eclectic tradition. Topics include literary evidence for linen armour; serial production in late medieval silks; the inventory of Isabella Bruce's bridal goods; the depiction of women textile workers in the frescoes of the Salone of the Palazzo della Ragione in Padua, Italy; ideal female beauty in the Middle Ages and the means used to attain and assess it; and social status as evidenced by clothing and textiles in the Scottish royal treasurer's accounts of the mid-sixteenth century.
The figure of a knight on horseback is the emblem of medieval chivalry. Much has been written on the ideology and practicalities of knighthood as portrayed in medieval romance, especially Arthurian romance, and it is surprising that so little attention was hitherto granted to the knight's closest companion, the horse. This study examines the horse as a social indicator, as the knight's animal alter ego in his spiritual peregrinations and earthly adventures, the ups and downs of chivalric adventure, as well as the relations between the lady and her palfrey in romance. Both medieval authors and their audiences knew more about the symbolism and practice of horsemanship than most readers do today. By providing the background to the descriptions of horses and horsemanship in Arthurian romance, this study deepens the readers' appreciation of these texts. At the same time, critical reading of romance supplies information about the ideology and daily practice of horsemanship in the Middle Ages that is otherwise impossible to obtain from other sources, be it archaeology, chronicles or administrative documentation.