John Benet's Chronicle, 1399-1462 is the first English translation of a fifteenth-century Latin chronicle which has been much used by medievalists since it was published in 1972. Lively and entertaining, it richly deserves the much wider readership that translation can now attract. The introduction argues that John Benet, vicar of Harlington, was only the - rather inefficient - copyist of a chronicle composed by an unidentified writer. Internal clues suggest that the real author was a Londoner who was exceptionally well-informed about events and people in the period of the Wars of the Roses. He was possibly a clerk to the signet, as this book investigates further.

Leaving the traditional focus on Arthurian romance and Gothic tales, the essays in this collection address how the Victorians looked back to the Middle Ages to create a sense of authority for their own ideas in areas such as art, religion, gender expectations, and social services. This book will interest specialists in the Victorian period from various fields and will also be a welcome addition to any library serving substantial humanities divisions. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of the essays, this collection would be useful in a wide range of humanities classes beyond the traditional literature class.

Fred C. Robinson is known throughout the world for some of the most original and stimulating work on Old English literature and language published in recent times. This book collects thirty seven of his essays and three substantial new articles, on the literary interpretation of Beowulf, the background and value of Ezra Pound's translation of The Seafarer, and an account of the use of Old English in twentieth-century literary composition.The essays range widely in terms of subject and approach. They include literary and textual interpretation and criticism of many of the best-known Old English poems including The Battle of Maldon and Exodus, an account of the historical, religious and cultural background to the writing of Beowulf, three articles on women in Old English literature and four on the significance of names and naming.The book is informed by the author's preoccupation with meaning, context and language and their subtle interactions. Its contents are characterized by readability and scholarship, and by learning and wit.

Witnesses to the disappearance of a text, palimpsest manuscripts bear the marks of their own genesis, with their original inscription rubbed out and written over on the same parchment.

This collection explores analogies of erasure and rewriting observed in editorial and literary practices underlying the production of texts from medieval England.

Raeleen Chai- Elsholz, Introduction: Palimpsests and ‘Palimpsestuous’ Reinscriptions, pp. 1-17. Abstract: This introduction analyzes the term “palimpsest” in relation to the various types of artifacts of cultural production discussed in the volume’s essays.

Adrian Papahagi, An Anglo- Saxon Palimpsest from Fleury: Orléans, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 342 (290), pp. 21-33. Abstract: This essay examines an Orléans manuscript (s. x/xi) against the background of exchanges between Fleury and Anglo- Saxon abbeys, and suggests it was palimpsested in Fleury.

Peter A. Stokes, Recovering Anglo-Saxon Erasures: Some Questions, Tools, and Techniques, pp. 35-60. Abstract: This essay provides practical instruction in enhancing digital images of damaged or palimpsested manuscripts, encompassing basic principles, hands-on techniques, and the ethics of enhancement.

Jane Roberts, Some Psalter Glosses in Their Immediate Context, pp. 61-79. Abstract: This essay looks closely at three Anglo-Saxon glossed psalters and how the palimpsestic layers of gloss and text, language and layout, speak to the meditative reader.

Paul E. Szarmach, The Palimpsest and Old English Homiletic Composition, pp. 81-94. Abstract: This essay proposes that the palimpsest offers a way to understand the composition techniques of Old English homilists, notably Ælfric, Wulfstan, and the anonymous tradition.

Sharon M. Rowley, 'Ic Beda’ . . . ‘Cwæð Beda’: Reinscribing Bede in the Old English Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, pp. 95-113. Abstract: This essay examines literal and metaphorical palimpsests in the OEHE, emphasizing the strategies through which Bede’s translators represent Bede’s voice in direct and indirect discourse.

Florence Bourgne, Vernacular Engravings in Late Medieval England, pp. 115-136. Abstract: Anxious late-medieval vernacular authors saturated their texts with references to engraved writings. These often refer to inscriptions on wax tablets, a fragile albeit professional medium.

Leo Carruthers, Rewriting Genres: Beowulf as Epic Romance, pp. 139-155. Abstract: Investigation of its historical matter in parallel with its generic classifications shows Beowulf to be a literary palimpsest anticipating the historical novel.

Gila Aloni, Palimpsestic Philomela: Reinscription in Chaucer’s “Legend of Philomela", pp. 157-173. Abstract: In rewriting Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book VI, Chaucer partially erases his source to make room for his own “Legend of Philomela.”

Claire Vial, The Middle English Breton Lays and the Mists of Origin, pp. 175-191. Abstract: Awareness of generic ancestry offers evidence of the palimpsestuous nature of the “true” Middle English Breton lays.

Colette Stévanovitch, Enquiries into the Textual History of the Seventeenth- Century Sir Lambewell (London, British Library, Additional 27897), pp. 193-204. Abstract: The mid- seventeenth-century romance Sir Lambewell incorporates accretions from various periods, which reflect the tastes of various audiences and coexist as in a palimpsest.

Jean- Marc Elsholz, Elucidations: Bringing to Light the Aesthetic Underwriting of the Matière de Bretagne in John Boorman’s Excalibur, pp. 205-226. Abstract: Boorman’s film Excalibur enacts medieval theories of light that form the underwriting of successive layers of the Arthurian romance tradition.

Proceedings of the Seminar held in Brussels, Belgium, October 17-18, 1983

THE OXFORD HISTORY OF LITERARY TRANSLATION IN ENGLISH
General Editors: Peter France and Stuart Gillespie
This groundbreaking five-volume history runs from the Middle Ages to the year 2000. It is a critical history, treating translations wherever appropriate as literary works in their own right, and reveals the vital part played by translators and translation in shaping the literary culture of the English-speaking world, both for writers and readers. It thus offers new and often challenging perspectives on the history of literature in English. As well as examining the translations and their wider impact, it explores the processes by which they came into being and were disseminated, and provides extensive bibliographical and biographical reference material.
Volume 1 of The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English originates with what medievalists have long known, that virtually everything written in the Middle Ages in English can be regarded, one way or another, as a translation, and that medieval understandings of what constitutes literature were significantly more generous than many modern ones. It uses modern as well as medieval understandings of translation to inform its discussions (the two understandings have a great deal in common), and it aims to situate medieval translation in English as fully as possible in its various cultural contexts: this includes, in particular, the complicated inter-relations of translation throughout the period into Latin, and (for the Middle English period) of translation in French. Since it also understands the Middle Ages of its title as including the first half of the sixteenth century, it studies what has survived of nearly athousand years of translation activity in England.

This book is a guide to the extraordinarily diverse literature of the Hellenistic period.* A guide to the literature of the Hellenistic age, from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE to the Battle of Actium in 31 BC* Provides overviews of the social, political, intellectual and literary historical contexts in which Hellenistic literature was produced* Introduces the major writers and genres of the period* Provides information about style, meter and languages to aid readers with no prior knowledge of the language in understanding technical aspects of literary Greek* Distinctive in its coverage of current issues in Hellenistic criticism, including audience reception, the political and social background, and Hellenistic theories of literature

The reception of ancient Cyprus in the Western world has not received much attention in scholarship, despite the fact that significant literary and extra-literary evidence presented by European intellectuals and artists explicitly or implicitly refers to the history of Cyprus, as well as to the myths and art produced on it or inspired by its landscape. This is a neglect that this volume wishes to address, by re-establishing the literary thread of the representation of ancient Cyprus beyond generic, spatial and temporal limits, and by thus shedding light on its depiction throughout the centuries, from the ancient Roman to the Western world up until modern times. The volume's central thesis is that a number of Cypriot traditions constitute a unique example of intercultural and multi-level fusions of diverse European civilizations. By investigating the various and often contradictory ways in which Cyprus was represented in Latin literature and beyond, the volume treats its multifaceted reception as a vastly complex matter, and suggests that even though the island has always been an outlier, it has often been explored in literature as an intellectual landscape and a precious pathway between at times conflictual yet compatible worlds.

Studies in the Age of Chaucer is the annual yearbook of the New Chaucer Society, publishing articles on the writing of Chaucer and his contemporaries, their antecedents and successors, and their intellectual and social contexts. More generally, articles explore the culture and writing of later medieval Britain (1200-1500). Each SAC volume also includes an annotated bibliography and reviews of Chaucer-related publications.

A period of tumultuous political and religious strife, the English Civil War has inspired writers for the past four centuries. Their works vary widely in quality from the hurriedly written political verse of the 17th century and the superficial or sentimental novels of the 19th and 20th centuries to the brilliantly conceived novels of Daniel Defoe, Nigel Tranter, and Iain Pears. All provide a perspective on a turbulent era. A useful tool for historians and researchers, this bibliography provides access to verse, novels, short stories, and plays about the Civil War era written between 1625 and 1999.

The book opens with an introductory survey of the political and religious conflicts that led to the war and the execution of Charles I and that continued through the Interregnum, Cromwell's Protectorate, and the Restoration of Charles II. It then provides a discussion of some of the fiction written about the events and personalities of the period. With over 900 annotated entries, the bibliography itself includes virtually all of the fiction written about the period.

The concept of news that we have today is not a modern invention, but rather a social and cultural institution that has been passed down to us by the Greeks as a legacy. This concept is only modified by the social, political, and economic conditions that make our society different from theirs. In order to understand what was considered news in Ancient Greece, a lexical study of and all of its derivatives attested in a representative corpus of the period spanning from the second millennium BC to the end of the fourth BC has been conducted. This piece of research provides new contributions both to studies in Classics (there are hardly any studies on the transmission of news in Antiquity) and in journalism. This study also reveals an interesting point: the presence of false news - similar to current fake news - in ancient Greek literature, especially in tragedy and historiography when it comes to the use of the derivatives of .

Everyone knows of the Canterbury Tales, acknowledged as one of the leading texts of the English Canon. Consensus about them ends there. Amongst the most written about works of English literature, they still defy categorisation. Was Chaucer a poet of profound religious piety or a sceptic who questioned all religious and moral certainties? Do his pilgrims reflect the actual society of his day, or were they a product of an already well-established literary tradition and convention? Was he a defender of women or a misogynist, who reproduced the antifeminism characteristic of his time? Did his writings present a challenge to the dominant social outlook of late Medieval England or reinforce the status quo? This stimulating new book surveys and assesses these competing critical approaches to Chaucer's work, emphasising the need to see Chaucer in historical context; the context of the social and political concerns of his own day. Writing as a historian, Rigby brings refreshing new insights to this contested old chestnut and Chaucer, and his Tales, are revealed to us as Chaucer's contemporaries would have seen them.

The present edition of the first book of the Epistulae ex Ponto gives a revised text with a new translation, an extended introduction, and the first full-scale commentary of this work in English. The commentary pays particular attention to stylistic questions and examines how the Epistulae exPonto differs from the poet's remaining oeuvre. It demonstrates that Ovid generally adopts a more colloquial and prosaic style (as suits the epistolary form) and that he carefully adjusts the stylistic register to the respective addressees of the letters.

This book illuminates the pervasive interplay of 'sacred' and 'secular' phenomena in the literature, history, politics, and religion of the Middle Ages and Early Modern periods. Following an introduction that examines methodological questions in the study of the sacred and the secular, the other essays treat (among other topics): Old English poetry, troubadour lyrics, twelfth-century romance, the Gregorian Reform, Middle English lyrics and the work of the Pearl-poet, Luther, and Shakespeare. The essays gathered here constitute a new way of applying a classic dichotomy to major cultural phenomena of the pre-modern era.

Packed full of analysis and interpretation, historical background, discussions and commentaries, York Notes will help you get right to the heart of the text you're studying, whether it's poetry, a play or a novel. You'll learn all about the historical context of the piece; find detailed discussions of key passages and characters; learn interesting facts about the text; and discover structures, patterns and themes that you may never have known existed. In the Advanced Notes, specific sections on critical thinking, and advice on how to read critically yourself, enable you to engage with the text in new and different ways. Full glossaries, self-test questions and suggested reading lists will help you fully prepare for your exam, while internet links and references to film, TV, theatre and the arts combine to fully immerse you in your chosen text. York Notes offer an exciting and accessible key to your text, enabling you to develop your ideas and transform your studies!

Literary historians have long held the view that the plays of the Greek dramatist, Sophocles deal purely with archetypes of the heroic past and that any resemblance to contemporary events or individuals is purely coincidental. In this book, Michael Vickers challenges this view and argues that Sophocles makes regular and extensive allusion to Athenian politics in his plays, especially to Alcibiades, one of the most controversial Athenian politicians of his day.Vickers shows that Sophocles was no closeted intellectual but a man deeply involved in politics and he reminds us that Athenian politics was intensely personal. He argues cogently that classical writers employed hidden meanings and that consciously or sub-consciously, Sophocles was projecting onto his plays hints of contemporary events or incidents, mostly of a political nature, hoping that his audience's passion for politics would enhance the popularity of his plays. Vickers strengthens his case about Sophocles by discussing other authors - Thucydides, Plato and Euripides - in whom he also demonstrates a body of allusions to Alcibiades and others.

This work explores the role of canon law in the ecclesiastical reform movement of the eleventh century, commonly known as the Gregorian Reform. Focusing on the Collectio canonum of Bishop Anselm of Lucca, it explores how the reformers came to value and employ law as as means of achieving desired ends in a time of social upheaval and revolution.

The British Romantic poets were among the first to realize the centrality of the "Divine Comedy" for the evolution of the European epic. This study explores the significance of Dante for Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, and William Blake. What was their idea of Dante? Why did they feel the need to approach his Christian epic on the afterlife? This study aims to answer these questions by focusing on the three poets' preoccupation with form and language.

This is the first comprehensive commentary on Callimachus' Hymn to Delos, its immediate predecessor being Cahen's concise work of 1930. The Introduction proposes a new interpretation of the Hymn's purpose and background, and further discusses the date of its composition, its vocabulary, several of its stylistic aspects, and its metre and prosody. The Commentary, which follows Pfeiffer's text (Oxford 1953), presents parallels from relevant Greek poetry (mainly epic and tragic) to illustrate tradition and originality in Callimachus' style, offers some new interpretations and examines old ones, and indicates possible allusions to contemporary events in Egypt and elsewhere. Textual problems are treated where necessary and emendations are also occasionally proposed.

This study shows how contemporary theory can serve to clarify structures of identity and economies of desire in medieval texts. Bringing the resources of psychoanalytic and poststructuralist theory to bear on Chaucer's tales about women, this book addresses those registers of the Canterbury project that remain major concerns for recent feminist theory: the specificity of feminine desire, the cultural articulation of gender, the logic of sacrifice as a cultural ideal, the structure of misogyny and domestic violence. This book maps out the ways in which Chaucer's rhetoric is not merely an element of style or an instrument of persuasion but the very matrix for the representation of de-centered subjectivity.