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Astell examines the conventions of medieval learning familiar to Chaucer and discovers in two related topical outlines, those of the seven planets and of the divisions of philosophy, an important key.
This book tracks how concepts of reading developed within Italian texts (including Dante's Vita nova, Boccaccio's Filostrato and Teseida, and Petrarch's Seniles) impress themselves upon Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and Canterbury Tales.
The question of the "dramatic principle" in the Canterbury Tales, of whether and how the individual tales relate to the pilgrims who are supposed to tell them, has long been a central issue in the interpretation of Chaucer's work. Drawing on ideas from deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and social theory, Leicester proposes that Chaucer can lead us beyond the impasses of contemporary literary theory and suggests new approaches to questions of agency, representation, and the gendered imagination. Leicester reads the Canterbury Tales as radically voiced and redefines concepts like "self" and "character" in the light of current discussions of language and subjectivity. He argues for Chaucer's dise...
This collection considers a wide range of texts, authors, and concerns--from the Man of Law's Tale to Tis Pity She's a Whore; from the mysterious Thomas Malory to the widely visible Ben Jonson; from the image of St. Paul's thorn in Troilus and Criseyde to the Renaissance iconography of Ganymede.
'This masterly work ought to be The Elizabethan Encyclopedia, and no less.' - Cahiers Elizabethains Edmund Spenser remains one of Britain's most famous poets. With nearly 700 entries this Encyclopedia provides a comprehensive one-stop reference tool for: * appreciating Spenser's poetry in the context of his age and our own * understanding the language, themes and characters of the poems * easy to find entries arranged by subject.
During the Renaissance the nature of womankind was a major topic of debate. Numerous dialogues, defenses, paradoxes, and tributes devoted to sustaining woman's excellence were published, and in them history was rewritten to include the achievements of womankind. Often these texts demonstrate that women are capable of acting with prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice, and thus are capable of being independent of male political and moral authority. Pamela Benson argues that the writers use literary means (genre, characterization, narrator, paradox, plot) to defeat the political challenge posed by female independence and to restrain women within a traditional role. The Invention of the R...
"Eleven essays that explore how modern scholarship interprets Chaucer's writings"--Provided by publisher.
H.Th. Chabot's Ph.D. thesis, Verwantschap, stand en sexe in Zuid-Celebes (1950), is an important source for the anthropology of South Celebes. Chabot's study, based on fieldwork in the 1940s provides insights into social relationships in a South Celebes village, focusing on demographic and spatial data, systems of marriage and the position of women. His observations are of great value for historical-comparative work. This English translation makes Chabot's study accessible to a new generation of researchers. Added to the translation are a biography of H.Th. Chabot (1910-1970) and a biography of is scholarly work, as well as an extensive introduction by Martin Rössler and Birgit Röttger-Rössler, placing Chabot's contribution in the context of other work on Macassarese and Buginese society.
In February 1945, Israele Zolli, chief rabbi of Rome's ancient Jewish community, shocked his co-religionists in Italy and throughout the Jewish world by converting to Catholicism and taking as his baptismal name, Eugenio, to honor Pope Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) for what Zolli saw as his great humanitarianism toward the Jews during the Holocaust. Almost a half a century after his conversion, Zolli still evokes anger and embarrassment in Italy's Jewish community. This book is the first authoritative treatment of this astonishing story. What induced Zolli to embrace Catholicism will probably never be known. Nonetheless, by painstaking scholarly detective work, through interviews in Italy and e...
This book discusses the cultural importance of spirits, what spirits want, and how humans interact with them, using examples from around the world and through time. Examples range from the vengeful spirits of the Zulu that cast lightning bolts from clear skies to punish wrongdoers, to the benevolent Puebloan Kachina that encourage prosperity, safety, and rain in the arid American Southwest. The case studies illustrate how humans seek to cooperate (or counteract) spirits to heal the physical and spiritual ailments of their people, to divine the truth, or to gain resources. Building from their cross-cultural analyses, the authors further discuss how our physiology and psychology impact our interaction with the spirits. Readers will come away with an appreciation of the beauty and power of the spirits that continue to shape the lives of people around the world.