"This series [pushes] the boundaries of knowledge and [develops] new trends in approach and understanding." ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW The essays in this volume explore relationships in all their different guises and expressions. Hostility between England and France cast a long shadow over the fifteenth century and beyond. While warfare at sea and the composition of the army which invaded Normandy in 1417 left extensive administrative records, sources of a different nature highlight the experiences of the French and Burgundians. The experience of the incursion of Henry VIII's forces in 1513 found expression in widely-distributed poems; while verses celebrating the births of heirs to the Hapsburg duke of Burgundy sought to allay fears over a change of regime by stressing the benefits of their multinational heritage. Portraits of rulers of Italian states emphasised the emergence of a shared courtly culture between England and Italy by commemorating their election as Knights of the Garter, while the records of Bishop's Lynn testify to the harmonious integration of immigrants from the Low Countries and Baltic regions. The Magna Carta of 1215 - intended to place the relationship between ruler and ruled on a new footing - had a long after-life, providing a blue-print for practices adopted by the Appellants of 1388 and being cited at the deposition of Richard II, only to be eclipsed in the late fifteenth century when depositions focused instead on challenges to the monarch's title. Poor records of the meetings of convocations have led to undue emphasis on their role in granting subsidies, but a register at Canterbury presents a different picture by revealing business of the southern convocation of 1462.

This book examines how the 'Manneken Pis' statue has come to symbolize the Brussels city and focuses on the multiplicity of interpretations to which the statue has been subjected. It explores that celebratory uses of the statue and ones which articulate the conflicts in society are related.

Manneken Pis, a fountain featuring a bronze child urinating, has stood on the same Brussels street corner since at least the mid-fifteenth century. Since there is no consensus on its meaning, it has been used to express many different readings of social relations in a complex city and nation state. It has formed part of the festival culture of the city from royal entries to gay pride but has also been exploited in conflicts arising out of war and occupation, and the tensions inherent in modern Belgium. Drawing on archives, histories, police reports, devotional literature, ephemera and a wealth of other sources, Catherine Emerson examines how one smaller-than-lifesized water source has come to embody a certain sort of Brussels identity.

The focus of the volume, in addition to standard features such as the bibliographical update on 15th-c. theater, is on late-medieval authors as literary critics. Founded in 1977 as the publication organ for the Fifteenth-Century Symposium, Fifteenth-Century Studies has appeared annually since then. It publishes essays on all aspects of life in the fifteenth century, including literature, drama, history, philosophy, art, music, religion, science, and ritual and custom. The editors strive to do justice to the most contested medieval century, a period that has long been the stepchild of research. The fifteenthcentury defies consensus on fundamental issues: some scholars dispute, in fact, whether it belonged to the middle ages at all, arguing that it was a period of transition, a passage to modern times. At issue, therefore, is the verytenor of an age that stood under the influence of Gutenberg, Columbus, the Devotio Moderna,, and Humanism. Along with the standard updating of bibliography on 15th-c. theater, this volume is devoted to research on late-medieval authors as literary critics. Thus, for the historian as well as the writer of fiction, the tenuous limits between truth and fantasy (and the role of doubt) are investigated. If there are several eyewitness accounts of an event, which one can be trusted? Medieval memorialists sometimes became advisors to princes and used a rhetoric of careful persuasion. Values such as chivalry, courtly love, and kingly self-representation come up for discussion here.Several essays ponder the structure of poetic forms and popular genres, and others consider more factual topics such as incunabula on medications, religious literature in the vernacular for everyday use, a student's notebook on magic, and late medieval merchants, money, and trade. Contributors: Edelgard DuBruck, Karen Casebier, Emma J. Cayley, Albrecht Classen, Michael G. Cornelius, Jean Dufornet, Catherine Emerson, Leonardas V. Gerulaitis, Kenneth Hodges, Sharon M. Loewald, Luca Pierdominici, Michel J. Raby, Elizabeth I. Wade. Edelgard E. DuBruck is professor emerita in the Modern Languages Department at Marygrove College in Detroit; Barbara I. Gusick is professor emerita of English at Troy University-Dothan, Dothan, Alabama.

The essays collected in this volume were selected from papers presented at a conference organized at the National University of Ireland, Galway in April 2004, on the subject of deceptive relationships in French and Francophone literature and visual culture. The collection examines specific representations and enactments of deception in French art and literature from the Middle Ages to the present. Divided into three thematic sections, the book begins by focusing on the role of distortion in art and literature, goes on to tackle the representation and practice of manipulation in certain works, and finally turns to the function of substitution in the construction and reception of artful deceptions.