The Medieval Imagination

by Jacques Le Goff

T. Clanchy, Times Literary Supplement The collection begins with an essay on 'the marvelous.

The Medieval Imagination

Author: Jacques Le Goff

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

ISBN: 9780226470856

Page: 293

View: 830

To write this history of the imagination, Le Goff has recreated the mental structures of medieval men and women by analyzing the images of man as microcosm and the Church as mystical body; the symbols of power such as flags and oriflammes; and the contradictory world of dreams, marvels, devils, and wild forests. "Le Goff is one of the most distinguished of the French medieval historians of his generation . . . he has exercised immense influence."—Maurice Keen, New York Review of Books "The whole book turns on a fascinating blend of the brutally materialistic and the generously imaginative."—Tom Shippey, London Review of Books "The richness, imaginativeness and sheer learning of Le Goff's work . . . demand to be experienced."—M. T. Clanchy, Times Literary Supplement

Medieval Imagination

by Douglas Kelly

Kelly's documentation is a fresh and useful contribution to the interpretation of this too-often neglected period.The flower of medieval French culture, the poetry of courtly love, is examined with an unprecedented thoroughness in this work ...

Medieval Imagination

Author: Douglas Kelly

Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press

ISBN: 9780299076108

Page: 330

View: 477

Medieval Imagination examines the poetry of courtly love with unprecedented thoroughness. Douglas Kelly offers detailed analyses of numerous works within a historical, conceptual, and artistic framework to establish the underlying concept of Imagination in courtly poetry. He capitalizes the term to underscore its medieval sense: the poet's invention of significant images to represent a certain conception of truth. Imagination, thus, in its metaphorical sense of providing an idea with a suitable representation in an image, permitted an allegory of love in romance and dream vision from the twelfth century on. The techniques employed in Imagination--allegory, personification, metonymy, synecdoche--are analyzed in detail as amplification. In addition to his complete coverage of the better-known poets like Guillaume de Lorris, Machaut, and Froissart, Kelly examines the work of such rarely treated writers as René d'Anjou and Oton de Grandson, as well as the Echecs amoureux and related medieval Latin writings. The concluding chapters including Charles d'Orléans, Chartier, and Christine de Pisan. The later chapters are a rare boon to French scholars in providing a survey of Middle French courtly literature, a little-explored area of scholarship. Kelly's documentation is a fresh and useful contribution to the interpretation of this too-often neglected period.The flower of medieval French culture, the poetry of courtly love, is examined with an unprecedented thoroughness in this work. Douglas Kelly offers detailed analyses of numerous works within a historical, conceptual, and artistic framework.

The Medieval Imagination

by Bronwyn Stocks

This Catalogue records an exhibition of illuminated manuscripts drawn from collections in Cambridge, Australia and New Zealand and presented by the State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, from March-June 2008.

The Medieval Imagination

Author: Bronwyn Stocks

Publisher: Macmillan Art Pub

ISBN: 9781921394072

Page: 286

View: 492

This Catalogue records an exhibition of illuminated manuscripts drawn from collections in Cambridge, Australia and New Zealand and presented by the State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, from March-June 2008. Twenty-six scholars, including Shane Carmody, Director of Collections, State Library of Victoria, the Catalogue's editors, Bronwyn Stocks and Nigel Morgan - and the curator of the exhibition, Margaret Manion - have contributed introductory essays and entries on each of the ninety-one important items displayed. The Catalogue includes glossary, bibliography and index.

The Medieval Imagination

by Phyllis Gaffney

Celebrating the life and works of Yolande de Pontfarcy Sexton, this volume builds on her work to show how, in European medieval narratives, archetypes and beliefs can impart a deeper vibrancy to human experience, reconfiguring the everyday ...

The Medieval Imagination

Author: Phyllis Gaffney

Publisher: Four Courts PressLtd

ISBN: 9781846823282

Page: 214

View: 972

Celebrating the life and works of Yolande de Pontfarcy Sexton, this volume builds on her work to show how, in European medieval narratives, archetypes and beliefs can impart a deeper vibrancy to human experience, reconfiguring the everyday into something rich and strange. A newly edited text ("Lay of the sparrowhawk") and eleven essays all focus on marvels of many kinds, ranging across imaginative literature and including even more imaginative forays into travel writing, ethnography, and historiography, from the insular and continental Middle Ages.

Incest and the Medieval Imagination

by Elizabeth Archibald

Incest is a remarkably frequent theme in medieval literature; it occurs in a wide range of genres, including romances, saints's lives, and exempla.

Incest and the Medieval Imagination

Author: Elizabeth Archibald

Publisher: OUP Oxford

ISBN: 0191540854

Page: 312

View: 782

Incest is a remarkably frequent theme in medieval literature; it occurs in a wide range of genres, including romances, saints's lives, and exempla. Historically, the Church in the later Middle Ages was very concerned about breaches of the complex laws against incest, which was defined very broadly at the time to cover family relationships outside the nuclear family and also spiritual relationships through baptism. Medieval writers accepted that incestuous desire was a widespread phenomenon among women as well as men. They are surprisingly open about incest, though of course they disapprove of it; in many exemplary stories incest is identified with original sin, but the moral emphasizes the importance of contrition and the availability of grace even to such heinous sinners. This study begins with a brief account of the development of medieval incest laws, and the extent to which they were obeyed. Next comes a survey of classical incest stories and their legacy; many were retold in the Middle Ages, but they were frequently adapted to the purposes of Christian moralizers. In the three chapters that follow, homegrown medieval incest stories are grouped by relationship: mother-son (focusing on the Gregorius legend), father-daughter (focusing on La Manekine and its analogues), and sibling (focusing on the Arthurian legend). The final chapter considers the very common medieval trope of the Virgin Mary as mother, daughter, sister and bride of Christ, the one exception to the incest taboo. In western society today, incest has recently been recognized as a serious social problem, and has also become a frequent theme in both fiction and non-fiction, just as it was in the Middle Ages. This interdisciplinary study is the first broad survey of medieval incest stories in Latin and the vernaculars (mainly French, English and German). It situates the incest theme in both literary and cultural contexts, and offers many thought-provoking comparisons and contrasts to our own society in terms of gender relations, the power of patriarchy, the role of religious institutions in regulating morality, and the relationship between life and literature.

Out of the East

by Paul Freedman

Ultimately, the spice quest led to imperial missions that were to change world history. This engaging book explores the demand for spices: why were they so popular, and why so expensive?

Out of the East

Author: Paul Freedman

Publisher: Yale University Press

ISBN: 0300211317

Page: 288

View: 259

The demand for spices in medieval Europe was extravagant and was reflected in the pursuit of fashion, the formation of taste, and the growth of luxury trade. It inspired geographical and commercial exploration ,as traders pursued such common spices as pepper and cinnamon and rarer aromatic products, including ambergris and musk. Ultimately, the spice quest led to imperial missions that were to change world history. This engaging book explores the demand for spices: why were they so popular, and why so expensive? Paul Freedman surveys the history, geography, economics, and culinary tastes of the Middle Ages to uncover the surprisingly varied ways that spices were put to use--in elaborate medieval cuisine, in the treatment of disease, for the promotion of well-being, and to perfume important ceremonies of the Church. Spices became symbols of beauty, affluence, taste, and grace, Freedman shows, and their expense and fragrance drove the engines of commerce and conquest at the dawn of the modern era.

Passion Relics and the Medieval Imagination

by Cynthia Hahn

Although objects associated with the Passion and suffering of Christ are among the most important and sacred relics venerated by the Catholic Church, this is the first study that considers how they were presented to the faithful.

Passion Relics and the Medieval Imagination

Author: Cynthia Hahn

Publisher: University of California Press

ISBN: 0520305264

Page: 176

View: 606

Although objects associated with the Passion and suffering of Christ are among the most important and sacred relics venerated by the Catholic Church, this is the first study that considers how they were presented to the faithful. Cynthia Hahn adopts an accessible, informative, and holistic approach to the important history of Passion relics—first the True Cross, and then the collective group of Passion relics—examining their display in reliquaries, their presentation in church environments, their purposeful collection as centerpieces in royal and imperial collections, and finally their veneration in pictorial form as Arma Christi. Tracing the ways that Passion relics appear and disappear in response to Christian devotion and to historical phenomena, ranging from pilgrimage and the Crusades to the promotion of imperial power, this groundbreaking investigation presents a compelling picture of a very important aspect of late medieval and early modern devotion.

Landscape in Middle English Romance

by Andrew M. Richmond

These popular texts also reveal widespread concern regarding the damaging effects of human actions and climate change.

Landscape in Middle English Romance

Author: Andrew M. Richmond

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

ISBN: 9781108831499

Page: 290

View: 164

Our current ecological crises compel us not only to understand how contemporary media shapes our conceptions of human relationships with the environment, but also to examine the historical genealogies of such perspectives. Written during the onset of the Little Ice Age in Britain, Middle English romances provide a fascinating window into the worldviews of popular vernacular literature (and its audiences) at the close of the Middle Ages. Andrew M. Richmond shows how literary conventions of romances shaped and were in turn influenced by contemporary perspectives on the natural world. These popular texts also reveal widespread concern regarding the damaging effects of human actions and climate change. The natural world was a constant presence in the writing, thoughts, and lives of the audiences and authors of medieval English romance - and these close readings reveal that our environmental concerns go back further in our history and culture than we think.

Chaucer the Alchemist

by Alexander N. Gabrovsky

This book explores Chaucer's fascination with earth's mutability. Gabrovsky reveals that his poetry represents a major contribution to a medieval worldview centered on the philosophy of physics, astronomy, alchemy, and logic.

Chaucer the Alchemist

Author: Alexander N. Gabrovsky

Publisher: Springer

ISBN: 1137523913

Page: 291

View: 669

The secrets of nature's alchemy captivated both the scientific and literary imagination of the Middle Ages. This book explores Chaucer's fascination with earth's mutability. Gabrovsky reveals that his poetry represents a major contribution to a medieval worldview centered on the philosophy of physics, astronomy, alchemy, and logic.

Building the Medieval World

by Christine Sciacca

Introduction : architecture in medieval life -- Mirror of the medieval world -- The castle -- Church spaces -- Medieval cities, towns, and countryside -- Documenting historical buildings -- Medieval construction methods -- Focus : ...

Building the Medieval World

Author: Christine Sciacca

Publisher: Getty Publications

ISBN: 1606060066

Page: 96

View: 118

Introduction : architecture in medieval life -- Mirror of the medieval world -- The castle -- Church spaces -- Medieval cities, towns, and countryside -- Documenting historical buildings -- Medieval construction methods -- Focus : architecture inside and out -- Architecture in stories and symbols -- Architecture in scripture -- Architecture in medieval literature -- Saints and their architectural symbols -- The Virgin Mary and the church -- Focus : architecture takes center stage -- Architecture beyond buildings -- Architecture in the margins -- Triumphal arches and niches of honor -- Framing charts and texts -- Structuring compositions -- Focus : architecture abstracted

The Barbarian North in Medieval Imagination

by Robert Rix

This book examines the sustained interest in legends of the pagan and peripheral North, tracing and analyzing the use of an ‘out-of-Scandinavia’ legend (Scandinavia as an ancestral homeland) in a wide range of medieval texts from all ...

The Barbarian North in Medieval Imagination

Author: Robert Rix

Publisher: Routledge

ISBN: 1317589688

Page: 214

View: 680

This book examines the sustained interest in legends of the pagan and peripheral North, tracing and analyzing the use of an ‘out-of-Scandinavia’ legend (Scandinavia as an ancestral homeland) in a wide range of medieval texts from all over Europe, with a focus on the Anglo-Saxon tradition. The pagan North was an imaginative region, which attracted a number of conflicting interpretations. To Christian Europe, the pagan North was an abject Other, but it also symbolized a place from which ancestral strength and energy derived. Rix maps how these discourses informed ‘national’ legends of ancestral origins, showing how an ‘out-of-Scandinavia’ legend can be found in works by several familiar writers including Jordanes, Bede, ‘Fredegar’, Paul the Deacon, Freculph, and Æthelweard. The book investigates how legends of northern warriors were first created in classical texts and since re-calibrated to fit different medieval understandings of identity and ethnicity. Among other things, the ‘out-of-Scandinavia’ tale was exploited to promote a legacy of ‘barbarian’ vigor that could withstand the negative cultural effects of Roman civilization. This volume employs a variety of perspectives cutting across the disciplines of poetry, history, rhetoric, linguistics, and archaeology. After years of intense critical interest in medieval attitudes towards the classical world, Africa, and the East, this first book-length study of ‘the North’ will inspire new debates and repositionings in medieval studies.

In Search of Sacred Time

by Jacques Le Goff

Assembled in the thirteenth century by Genoese archbishop Jacobus de Voragine, the book became the medieval equivalent of a bestseller. In Search of Sacred Time is the first comprehensive history and interpretation of this crucial book.

In Search of Sacred Time

Author: Jacques Le Goff

Publisher: Princeton University Press

ISBN: 0691204543

Page: 232

View: 945

How The Golden Legend shaped the medieval imagination It is impossible to understand the Middle Ages without grasping the importance of The Golden Legend, the most popular medieval collection of saints' lives. Assembled in the thirteenth century by Genoese archbishop Jacobus de Voragine, the book became the medieval equivalent of a bestseller. In Search of Sacred Time is the first comprehensive history and interpretation of this crucial book. Jacques Le Goff, who was one of the world's most renowned medievalists, provides a lucid and compelling account that shows how The Golden Legend Christianized time itself, reconciling human and divine temporality. Authoritative, eloquent, and original, In Search of Sacred Time is a major reinterpretation of a book that is central to comprehending the medieval imagination.

The Medieval World

by Peter Linehan

This groundbreaking collection brings the Middle Ages to life and conveys the distinctiveness of this diverse, constantly changing period.

The Medieval World

Author: Peter Linehan

Publisher: Psychology Press

ISBN: 9780415302340

Page: 745

View: 339

This groundbreaking collection brings the Middle Ages to life and conveys the distinctiveness of this diverse, constantly changing period. Thirty-eight scholars bring together one medieval world from many disparate worlds, from Connacht to Constantinople and from Tynemouth to Timbuktu. This extraordinary set of reconstructions presents the reader with a vivid re-drawing of the medieval past, offering fresh appraisals of the evidence and modern historical writing. Chapters are thematically linked in four sections: identities beliefs, social values and symbolic order power and power-structures elites, organizations and groups. Packed full of original scholarship, The Medieval World is essential reading for anyone studying medieval history.

Imprisonment in the Medieval Religious Imagination c 1150 1400

by M. Cassidy-Welch

This book explores the world of religious thinking on imprisonment, and how images of imprisonment were used in monastic thought, the cult of saints, the early inquisitions, preaching and hagiographical literature and the world of the ...

Imprisonment in the Medieval Religious Imagination c 1150 1400

Author: M. Cassidy-Welch

Publisher: Springer

ISBN: 0230306403

Page: 192

View: 189

This book explores the world of religious thinking on imprisonment, and how images of imprisonment were used in monastic thought, the cult of saints, the early inquisitions, preaching and hagiographical literature and the world of the crusades to describe a conception of inclusion and freedom that was especially meaningful to medieval Christians.

Faces of Power Piety

by Erik Inglis

Faces of Power and Piety is the second in the Medieval Imagination series of small, affordable books that draw on manuscript illuminations in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum and the British Library.

Faces of Power Piety

Author: Erik Inglis

Publisher: Getty Publications

ISBN: 9780892369300

Page: 88

View: 770

Faces of Power and Piety is the second in the Medieval Imagination series of small, affordable books that draw on manuscript illuminations in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum and the British Library. Each volume focuses on a particular theme to provide an accessible and delightful introduction to the imagination of the medieval world. The vivid and charming faces featured in this volume include portraits of both illustrious historical figures and celebrated contemporaries. They reveal that medieval artists often disregarded physical appearance in favor of emphasizing qualities such as power and piety, capturing how their subjects wished to be remembered for the ages. Faces of Power and Piety also looks at the development of portraiture in the modern sense during the Renaissance, when likeness became an important component of portrait painting. An exhibition of the same name will be on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum from August 12 through October 26, 2008.

Saracens

by John V. Tolan

Saracens explores the social and ideological uses of contempt, explaining how the denigration of the other can be used to defend one's own intellectual construction of the world.

Saracens

Author: John V. Tolan

Publisher: Columbia University Press

ISBN: 0231506465

Page: 400

View: 295

In the first century of Islam, most of the former Christian Roman Empire, from Syria to Spain, was brought under Muslim control in a conquest of unprecedented proportions. Confronted by the world of Islam, countless medieval Christians experienced a profound ambivalence, awed by its opulence, they were also troubled by its rival claims to the spiritual inheritance of Abraham and Jesus and humiliated by its social subjugation of non-Muslim minorities. Some converted. Others took up arms. Still others, the subjects of John Tolan's study of anti-Muslim polemics in medieval Europe, undertook to attack Islam and its most vivid avatar, the saracen, with words. In an effort to make sense of God's apparent abandonment of Christendom in favor of a dynamic and expanding Muslim civilization, European writers distorted the teachings of Islam and caricatured its believers in a variety of ways. What ideological purposes did these portrayals serve? And how, in turn, did Muslims view Christianity? Feelings of rivalry, contempt, and superiority existed on both sides, tinged or tempered at times with feelings of doubt, inferiority, curiosity, or admiration. Tolan shows how Christian responses to Islam changed from the seventh to thirteenth centuries, through fast-charging crusades and spirit-crushing defeats, crystallizing into polemical images later drawn upon by Western authors in the fourteenth to twentieth centuries. Saracens explores the social and ideological uses of contempt, explaining how the denigration of the other can be used to defend one's own intellectual construction of the world.

Images in the Margins

by Margot McIlwain Nishimura

Images in the Margins is the third in the popular Medieval Imagination series of small, affordable books drawing on manuscript illumination in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum and the British Library.

Images in the Margins

Author: Margot McIlwain Nishimura

Publisher: Getty Publications

ISBN: 9780892369829

Page: 78

View: 160

Images in the Margins is the third in the popular Medieval Imagination series of small, affordable books drawing on manuscript illumination in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum and the British Library. Each volume focuses on a particular theme and provides an accessible, delightful introduction to the imagination of the medieval world. An astonishing mix of mundane, playful, absurd, and monstrous beings are found in the borders of English, French, and Italian manuscripts from the Gothic era. Unpredictable, topical, often irreverent, like the New Yorker cartoons of today, marginalia were a source of satire, serious social observation, and amusement for medieval readers. Through enlarged, full-color details and a lively narrative, this volume brings these intimately scaled, fascinating images to a wider audience. It accompanies an exhibition on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum from September 1 through November 8, 2009.

Medieval Blood

by Bettina Bildhauer

Publisher Description

Medieval Blood

Author: Bettina Bildhauer

Publisher:

ISBN: 9780708321973

Page: 245

View: 344

An important chapter in the history of the human body, this study investigates the significance of medieval writers' view of the body as merely a container of blood. Written from an interdisciplinary perspective, the discussion includes why the blood of Christ and the saints were venerated, how knights' blood was spilled to establish their superior valor, and how the discipline of medicine understood health and personality to be based on blood. Also discussed is the role of medieval law in regulating bloodshed and the mixing of blood, while also upholding the social links between families based on blood.

The Apocalyptic Imagination in Medieval Literature

by Richard Kenneth Emmerson

During the Middle Ages, the Apocalypse, or Book of Revelation, was believed to contain both the grand design of sacred history and the disguised history of the Present and future.

The Apocalyptic Imagination in Medieval Literature

Author: Richard Kenneth Emmerson

Publisher:

ISBN:

Page: 244

View: 171

During the Middle Ages, the Apocalypse, or Book of Revelation, was believed to contain both the grand design of sacred history and the disguised history of the Present and future. In The Apocalyptic Imagination in Medieval Literature, Richard K. Emmerson and Ronald B. Herzman explore die pervasiveness of apocalypticism in medieval literature through close readings of a group of major texts not generally considered from an apocalyptic perspective. Emmerson and Herzman present a new reading of Bonaventure's Major Life of Francis of Assisi, a key document in the Franciscan tradition. In their examination of the Romance of the Rose, they argue that allegorical romance takes a surprising turn toward contemporary social criticism, a criticism informed by a sophisticated and subtle use of the apocalyptic tradition. The authors also contend that while the apocalyptic language of the Divine Comedy is more obvious, its significance has not been systematically studied, and that The Canterbury Tales, all but ignored from an apocalyptic perspective, are infused with significant apocalyptic dimensions. The Apocalyptic Imagination in Medieval Literature offers a broad and comparative focus, and it should be of value not simply to students of medieval literature but to the broader audience of those interested in medieval intellectual history, art history, and religious history as well.