More than any other secular story of the Middle Ages, the tale of Tristan and Isolde fascinated its audience. Adaptations in poetry, prose, and drama were widespread in western European vernacular languages. Visual portrayals of the story appear not only in manuscripts and printed books but in individual pictures and pictorial narratives, and on an amazing array of objects including stained glass, wall paintings, tiles, tapestries, ivory boxes, combs, mirrors, shoes, and misericords. The pan-European and cross-media nature of the surviving medieval evidence is not adequately reflected in current Tristan scholarship, which largely follows disciplinary and linguistic lines. The contributors to Visuality and Materiality in the Story of Tristan and Isolde seek to address this problem by opening a cross-disciplinary dialogue and by proposing a new set of intellectual coordinates-the concepts of materiality and visuality-without losing sight of the historical specificity or the aesthetic character of individual works of art and literature. Their theoretical paradigm allows them to survey the richness of the surviving evidence from a variety of disciplinary approaches, while offering new perspectives on the nature of representation in medieval culture. Enriched by numerous illustrations, this volume is an important examination of the story of Tristan and Isolde in the European context of its visual and textual transmission.

In Miserere Mei, Clare Costley King'oo examines the critical importance of the Penitential Psalms in England between the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century. During this period, the Penitential Psalms inspired an enormous amount of creative and intellectual work: in addition to being copied and illustrated in Books of Hours and other prayer books, they were expounded in commentaries, imitated in vernacular translations and paraphrases, rendered into lyric poetry, and even modified for singing. Miserere Mei explores these numerous transformations in materiality and genre. Combining the resources of close literary analysis with those of the history of the book, it reveals not only that the Penitential Psalms lay at the heart of Reformation-age debates over the nature of repentance, but also, and more significantly, that they constituted a site of theological, political, artistic, and poetic engagement across the many polarities that are often said to separate late medieval from early modern culture. Miserere Mei features twenty-five illustrations and provides new analyses of works based on the Penitential Psalms by several key writers of the time, including Richard Maidstone, Thomas Brampton, John Fisher, Martin Luther, Sir Thomas Wyatt, George Gascoigne, Sir John Harington, and Richard Verstegan. It will be of value to anyone interested in the interpretation, adaptation, and appropriation of biblical literature; the development of religious plurality in the West; the emergence of modernity; and the periodization of Western culture. Students and scholars in the fields of literature, religion, history, art history, and the history of material texts will find Miserere Mei particularly instructive and compelling.

The sacred and the secular in medieval literature have too often been perceived as opposites, or else relegated to separate but unequal spheres. In Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular against the Sacred, Barbara Newman offers a new approach to the many ways that sacred and secular interact in medieval literature, arguing that (in contrast to our own cultural situation) the sacred was the normative, unmarked default category against which the secular always had to define itself and establish its niche. Newman refers to this dialectical relationship as "crossover"-which is not a genre in itself, but a mode of interaction, an openness to the meeting or even merger of sacred and secular in a wide variety of forms. Newman sketches a few of the principles that shape their interaction: the hermeneutics of "both/and," the principle of double judgment, the confluence of pagan material and Christian meaning in Arthurian romance, the rule of convergent idealism in hagiographic romance, and the double-edged sword in parody. Medieval Crossover explores a wealth of case studies in French, English, and Latin texts that concentrate on instances of paradox, collision, and convergence. Newman convincingly and with great clarity demonstrates the widespread applicability of the crossover concept as an analytical tool, examining some very disparate works. These include French and English romances about Lancelot and the Grail; the mystical writing of Marguerite Porete (placed in the context of lay spirituality, lyric traditions, and the Romance of the Rose); multiple examples of parody (sexually obscene, shockingly anti-Semitic, or cleverly litigious); and Rene of Anjou's two allegorical dream visions. Some of these texts are scarcely known to medievalists; others are rarely studied together. Newman's originality in her choice of these primary works will inspire new questions and set in motion new fields of exploration for medievalists working in a large variety of disciplines, including literature, religious studies, history, and cultural studies.

A SUNDAY TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR

'A triumph' Guardian

'Glorious ... makes the past at once familiar, exotic and thrilling.' Dominic Sandbrook

'A brilliant book' Mail on Sunday

Just like us, medieval men and women worried about growing old, got blisters and indigestion, fell in love and had children. And yet their lives were full of miraculous and richly metaphorical experiences radically different to our own, unfolding in a world where deadly wounds might be healed overnight by divine intervention, or the heart of a king, plucked from his corpse, could be held aloft as a powerful symbol of political rule.

In this richly-illustrated and unusual history, Jack Hartnell uncovers the fascinating ways in which people thought about, explored and experienced their physical selves in the Middle Ages, from Constantinople to Cairo and Canterbury. Unfolding like a medieval pageant, and filled with saints, soldiers, caliphs, queens, monks and monstrous beasts, it throws light on the medieval body from head to toe - revealing the surprisingly sophisticated medical knowledge of the time in the process.

Bringing together medicine, art, music, politics, philosophy and social history, there is no better guide to what life was really like for the men and women who lived and died in the Middle Ages.

Medieval Bodies is published in association with Wellcome Collection.

How and why does vernacular art become foreign? What does 'Greek manner' mean in regions far beyond the Mediterranean? What stories do images need? How do narratives shape pictures? The study addresses these questions in Byzantine paintings from the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, contextualized with evidence from Poland, Serbia, Russia, and Italy. The research follows developments in artistic practices and the reception of these images, as well as distinguishing between the Greek manner - based on visual qualities - and the style favoured by the devout, sustained by cults and altered through stories. Following the reception of Byzantine and pseudo-Byzantine art in Lithuania and Poland from the late fourteenth through the early eighteenth centuries, Maniera Greca in Europe's Catholic East argues that tradition is repetitive order achieved through reduction and oblivion, and concludes that the sole persistent understanding of the Greek image has been stereotyped as the icon of the Mother of God.

An introduction to the medieval cathedral, those churches that are regarded as the greatest achievements of medieval architecture. Details their social history, who built them, how they were built, and why. Forty photos and maps help to guide the reader through a narrated tour of these awe-inspiring churches. When we think of cathedrals, we usually envision the great Gothic Buildings of 12th- and 13th-century Europe. But other than being a large church, a cathedral is neither a specific building type nor specifically medieval. What a makes a large church a cathedral is the presence of a single item of furniture: the chair (in Latin: cathedra) or throne that is the symbol of the ecclesiastical and spiritual authority of a bishop. This book is an introduction to the medieval cathedral, those churches that are usually regarded as among the greatest achievements of medieval architecture. While cathedrals were often the most prominent urban structure in many European cities, their construction was never a civic responsibility, but remained the responsibility of the clergy in charge of the day to day activities and services. Beginning with an overview of the social history of cathedrals, Clark examines such topics as patrons, builders and artists, and planning and construction; and provides an in-depth examination of the French Cathedral at Reims—a seminal building with significant technological advances, important sculptural programs, a surviving bishop's palace, and other structures. The volume concludes with a series of illustrations, a selection of original texts, and a selected bibliography for further study. A full index is also provided.

The dominant form of Ottoman pictorial art until the eighteenth century, miniatures have traditionally been studied as reflecting the socio-historical contexts, aesthetic concerns and artistic tastes of the era within which they were produced. Begum Ozden Fyrat proposes instead a radical re-reading of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century miniatures in the light of contemporary critical theory, highlighting the viewer's encounter with the image. Encounters with the Ottoman Miniature employs contemporary concepts such as the gaze, frame/framing, reading and re-reading, drawing on thinkers such as Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes and Gilles Deleuze to establish the vibrant cultural agency of miniature paintings. With analysis that illuminates both the social and political situations in which these miniatures were painted as well as emphasising the miniature's contemporary relevance, Firat presents an important new re-imagining of this art form.