You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
There is no doubt that Thomas Aquinas, together with Augustine, is among the most influential authorities in the history of Western Christian theology. Through the centuries, theologians and philosophers have interpreted Aquinas and (re-)constructed his thought in various ways. As a result of this, a very rich variety of theological and philosophical positions have appeared that claim to be inspired by the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Positions like these are often labelled as a form of 'Thomism'. Although this can be helpful in bringing some order into the history of thought, there is also a deceptive side to it. Any classification runs the risk of obscuring the multiplicity of interests that...
A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture, c.1350-c.1500 challenges readers to think beyond a narrowly defined canon and conventional disciplinary boundaries. A ground-breaking collection of newly-commissioned essays on medieval literature and culture. Encourages students to think beyond a narrowly defined canon and conventional disciplinary boundaries. Reflects the erosion of the traditional, rigid boundary between medieval and early modern literature. Stresses the importance of constructing contexts for reading literature. Explores the extent to which medieval literature is in dialogue with other cultural products, including the literature of other countries, manuscripts and religion. Includes close readings of frequently-studied texts, including texts by Chaucer, Langland, the Gawain poet, and Hoccleve. Confronts some of the controversies that exercise students of medieval literature, such as those connected with literary theory, love, and chivalry and war.
Vernacular writers of late medieval England were engaged in global conversations about orthodoxy and heresy. Entering these conversations with a developing vernacular required lexical innovation. The Language of Heresy in Late Medieval English Literature examines the way in which these writers complemented seemingly straightforward terms, like heretic, with a range of synonyms that complicated the definitions of both those words and orthodoxy itself. This text proposes four specific terms that become collated with heretic in the parlance of medieval English writers of the 14th and 15th centuries: jangler, Jew, Saracen, and witch. These four labels are especially important insofar as they represent the way in which medieval Christianity appropriated and subverted marginalized or vulnerable identities to promote a false image of unassailable authority.
Luxurious Sexualities contains some of the most path- breaking adventurous critical writing currently to be found in Britain. Focusing on eighteenth century sexuality it is intriguing, controversial and provoking. Textual Practice contains articles relating to women, popular culture, visual media, and ethnic and sexual minorities.
In the last quarter of the fourteenth century, the complete Old and New Testaments were translated from Latin into English, first very literally, and then revised into a more fluent, less Latinate style. This outstanding achievement, the Middle English Bible, is known by most modern scholars as the "Wycliffite" or "Lollard" Bible, attributing it to followers of the heretic John Wyclif. Prevailing scholarly opinion also holds that this Bible was condemned and banned by the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel, at the Council of Oxford in 1407, even though it continued to be copied at a great rate. Indeed, Henry Ansgar Kelly notes, it was the most popular work in English of the Middle Ages...
The Companion to John Wyclif contains eight substantial essays covering the central aspects of John Wyclif's life and thought. The volume's authors have drawn on an extensive amount of primary material, as well as the most recent secondary sources, so as to present a comprehensive picture of Wyclif in his times. Topics covered include a detailed life and career of Wyclif, and close analyses of his logic and metaphysics; doctrine of the Trinity and Christology; political views; Christian life and piety; sacraments; the Bible; and an examination of his medieval opponents. Experts and students alike will profit from these in-depth studies all of which provide a view of Wyclif in his late medieval context. For those not already familiar with Wyclif this volume will serve as an excellent introduction; and those with greater expertise will find fresh appraisals which may, in turn, lead to further research.
Scholastic disputation, the formalized procedure of debate in the medieval university, is one of the hallmarks of intellectual life in premodern Europe. Modeled on Socratic and Aristotelian methods of argumentation, this rhetorical style was refined in the monasteries of the early Middle Ages and rose to prominence during the twelfth-century Renaissance. Strict rules governed disputation, and it became the preferred method of teaching within the university curriculum and beyond. In The Medieval Culture of Disputation, Alex J. Novikoff has written the first sustained and comprehensive study of the practice of scholastic disputation and of its formative influence in multiple spheres of cultura...
The study of medieval literature has experienced a revolution in the last two decades, which has reinvigorated many parts of the discipline and changed the shape of the subject in relation to the scholarship of the previous generation. 'New' texts (laws and penitentials, women's writing, drama records), innovative fields and objects of study (the history of the book, the study of space and the body, medieval masculinities), and original ways of studying them (the Sociology of the Text, performance studies) have emerged. This has brought fresh vigour and impetus to medieval studies, and impacted significantly on cognate periods and areas. The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English ...
Academic condemnation has long been recognized as an important issue in the history of universities and the history of medieval thought. Yet few studies have examined the phenomenon in serious detail. This work is the first book-length study of academic condemnations at Oxford. It explores every known case in detail, including several never examined before, and then considers the practice of condemnation as a whole. As such, it provides a context to see John Wyclif and the Oxford Lollards not as unique figures, but as targets of a practice a century old by 1377. It argues that condemnation did not happen purely for reasons of theological purity, but reflected social and institutional pressures within the university.
Widely recognized by contemporaries as the most powerful theologian of his generation, Jean Gerson (1363-1429) dominated the stage of western Europe during a time of plague, fratricidal war, and religious schism. Yet modern scholarship has struggled to define Gerson's place in history, even as it searches for a compelling narrative to tell the story of his era. Daniel Hobbins argues for a new understanding of Gerson as a man of letters actively managing the publication of his works in a period of rapid expansion in written culture. More broadly, Hobbins casts Gerson as a mirror of the complex cultural and intellectual shifts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In contrast to earlier t...