You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The volume provides readers with a clear introduction to English Renaissance literary texts. Concise but detailed entries are alphabetically arranged, providing a coherent overview of central issues in the study of writings of the Renaissance era. Cross-referencing and suggestions for further reading indicate connections between topics.
Table of contents
Sieges were a popular subject in medieval romances. Tales of the Crusades featured champions of Christianity capturing towns in the Holy Land or mounting heroic defences. The fall of a great city such as Troy, Thebes, or Jerusalem provided opportunities for the recreation of ancient chivalry and for reflections on historical change. Images of the siege in romances also point to other forms, such as drama and love allegory, where it represents the trial of the soul or the pursuit of the beloved. This book is the first full-length study of an important theme in medieval literature. Close reading of selected Middle English shows how writers used descriptions of sieges to explore such subjects as military strategy, heroism, chivalry, and attitudes to the past. This study also draws on a wide range of writings in several languages, to set the romances in a broad context. When they are seen against a background of military manuals, patristic commentary, pageantry, and love poetry, the sieges of romance take on deeper resonances of meaning and reflect the vitality of the theme in medieval culture as a whole.
This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Pulp Fictions of Medieval England demonstrates that popular romance not only merits and rewards serious critical attention, but that we ignore it to the detriment of our understanding of the complex and conflicted world of medieval England.
Guillaume Caoursin, the Vice-chancellor of the Order of the Hospital, wrote the Obsidionis Rhodiae urbis descriptio (Description of the Siege of Rhodes) as the official record of the Ottoman siege of the Knights in Rhodes in 1480. The Descriptio was the first authorized account of the Order’s activities to appear in printed form, and it became one of the best sellers of the 15th century. The publication of the Descriptio not only fed Western Europe’s hunger for news about an important Christian victory in the ongoing war with the Turks, it also served to shape public perceptions of the Hospitallers. Caoursin wrote in a humanistic style, sacrificing military terminology to appeal to an ed...
Few events in European history generated more historical, artistic, and literary responses than the conquest of Jerusalem by the armies of the First Crusade in 1099. This epic military and religious expedition, and the many that followed it, became part of the collective memory of communities in Europe, Byzantium, North Africa, and the Near East. Remembering the Crusades examines the ways in which those memories were negotiated, transmitted, and transformed from the Middle Ages through the modern period. Bringing together leading scholars in art history, literature, and medieval European and Near Eastern history, this volume addresses a number of important questions. How did medieval communi...
A wide-ranging collection on one of the most interesting features of medieval romance.
This volume captures the diverse ways in which Shakespeare interacts with educational theory and practice. It explores the depiction of learning and education in the plays, the role of Shakespeare as pedagogue, and ways in which the teaching of Shakespeare can facilitate discussion of some of the urgent questions of modern times. The book offers a wide range of perspectives – historical, theoretical, theatrical. The Renaissance humanist learning underpinning Shakespeare’s own work is explored in essays that consider how the complexity of Shakespeare’s drama challenges early-modern pedagogical orthodoxies. From close analysis of individual, solitary reflection on Shakespeare’s writing...
"An extremely interesting and important book... makes an important contribution to the history of medieval monastic spirituality in a formative period, whilst also fitting into wider debates on the origins, development and impact of ideas on crusading and holy war." Dr William Purkis, University of Birmingham Monastic culture has generally been seen as set apart from the medieval battlefield, as "those who prayed" were set apart from "those who fought". However, in this first study of the place of war within medieval monastic culture, the author shows the limitations of this division. Through a wide reading of Latin sermons, letters, and hagiography, she identifies a monastic language of war...
We are living in times when populism, war and climate change are all sources of anxiety caused by overlapping crises. Anxiety is a phenomenon that is not just reflected everywhere around us but is also increasingly manifesting itself in contemporary drama: particularly in the last five to ten years many new British dramas and theatre productions have given a stage to anxiety. Given this central role of anxiety, the aim of this study is to outline the interplay of theatre and anxiety on both a thematic and aesthetic level. It argues that a strand of contemporary theatre that combines topics of social, ecological, technological and pandemic importance with investigations into the philosophical...