The most recent research into the Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, and Angevin worlds. Embracing disciplinary approaches ranging from the archaeological to the historical, the sociological to the literary, this collection offers new insights into key texts and interpretive problems in the history of England and thecontinent between the eighth and thirteenth centuries. Topics range from Bede's use and revision of the anonymous Life of St Cuthbert and the redeployment of patristic texts in later continental and Anglo-Saxon ascetic andhagiographical texts, to Robert Curthose's interaction with the Norman episcopate and the revival of Roman legal studies, to the dynamics of aristocratic friendship in the Anglo-Norman realm, and much more. The volume also includes two methodologically rich studies of vital aspects of the historical landscape of medieval England: rivers and forests. William North teaches in the Department of History, Carleton College. Contributors: Richard Allen, Uta-Renate Blumenthal, Ruth Harwood Cline, Thomas Cramer, Mark Gardiner, C. Stephen Jaeger, David A.E. Pelteret, Sally Shockro, Rebecca Slitt, Timothy Smit

Historical research into emotionality is at present generally enjoying an heightened level of interest. This bilingual volume documents the proceedings of an international conference, discussing current paradigms and perspectives in historical literary research into emotions and heightening awareness of the mediality of cultures of emotion in historical change. The discussion of methodological questions opens up avenues for interdisciplinary research.

"Richard, Duke of Aquitaine, son of the King of England, remained with Philip, the King of France, who so honored him for so long that they ate every day at the same table and from the same dish, and at night their beds did not separate them. And the King of France loved him as his own soul; and they loved each other so much that the King of England was absolutely astonished at the vehement love between them and marveled at what it could mean." Public avowals of love between men were common from antiquity through the Middle Ages. What do these expressions leave to interpretation? An extraordinary amount, as Stephen Jaeger demonstrates. Unlike current efforts to read medieval culture through modern mores, Stephen Jaeger contends that love and sex in the Middle Ages relate to each other very differently than in the postmedieval period. Love was not only a mode of feeling and desiring, or an exclusively private sentiment, but a way of behaving and a social ideal. It was a form of aristocratic self-representation, its social function to show forth virtue in lovers, to raise their inner worth, to increase their honor and enhance their reputation. To judge from the number of royal love relationships documented, it seems normal, rather than exceptional, that a king loved his favorites, and the courtiers and advisors, clerical and lay, loved their superiors and each other. Jaeger makes an elaborate, accessible, and certain to be controversial, case for the centrality of friendship and love as aristocratic lay, clerical, and monastic ideals. Ennobling Love is a magisterial work, a book that charts the social constructions of passion and sexuality in our own times, no less than in the Middle Ages.

A wide overview of court culture in the middle ages. The court exercised an enormous amount of influence on the culture of the middle ages, as the essays collected here demonstrate. They examine a wide variety of different areas of medieval courtly culture, from the history of the book through courtly music to the theory of courtesy and courtly love. While some authors deal with the central texts of courtly literature, such as Castiglione's Book of the Courtier, Marie de France's Lais, the romances of Chretien de Troyes, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried von Strassburg, and the corpus of courtly lyric in various languages, others consider less-studied works like Galeran de Bretagne, or the French version of the Disciplina Clericalis. Several contributions take a comparative approach to courtly texts outside the Western tradition, while others point to the courtly nature of chronicle literature and to courtly influences on religious-didactic works. The volume as a whole thus presents an overview of medieval court culture. Contributors: GLORIA ALLAIRE, LAURA D. BAREFIELD, ANNE BERTHELOT, BERT BEYNEN, JEAN BLACKER, WALTER BLUE, MAUREEN BOULTON, FRANKBRANDSMA, EMMA CAYLEY, MARCO CEROCCHI, CHRISTOPHER R. CLASON, ALAIN CORBELLARI, IVY A. CORFIS, PAUL CREAMER, EVELYN DATTA, JUDITH M. DAVIS, FIDEL FAJARDO-ACOSTA, YASMINA FOEHR-JANSSENS, STACY L. HAHN, CAROL HARVEY, C. STEPHEN JAEGER, KATHY M. KRAUSE, JUNE HALL MCCASH, MATTHIAS MEYER, EDWARD J. MILOWICKI, JEANNE A. NIGHTINGALE, CHRISTOPHER PAGE, ANA PAIRET, WENDY PFEFFER, RUPERT T. PICKENS, MARIA PREDELLI, SILVIA RANAWAKE, PAUL ROCKWELL, SAMUEL, N. ROSENBERG, JUDITH RICE ROTHSCHILD, MARY ROUSE, RICHARD ROUSE, MARIANNE SANDELS, SUSAN STAKEL, ALEXANDRA STERLING-HELLENBRAND, JOSEPH M. SULLIVAN, YUKO TAGAYA, RICHARD TRACHSLER, ADRIAN TUDOR, MARION UHLIG, LORI J. WALTERS, LOGAN E. WHALEN, VALERIE M. WILHITE, MONICA L. WRIGHT.

Selected by "Choice" magazine as an Outstanding Academic BookArgues that the origins of courtliness lie in the German courts, their courtier class, and the education for court service in the tenth and eleventh centuries.

The history of medieval learning has traditionally been studied as a vertical transmission of knowledge from a master to one or several disciples. Horizontal Learning in the High Middle Ages: Peer-to-Peer Knowledge Transfer in Religious Communities centres on the ways in which cohabiting peers learned and taught one another in a dialectical process - how they acquired knowledge and skills, but also how they developed concepts, beliefs, and adapted their behaviour to suit the group: everything that could mold a person into an efficient member of the community. This process of 'horizontal learning' emerges as an important aspect of the medieval learning experience. Progressing beyond the view that high medieval religious communities were closed, homogeneous, and fairly stable social groups, the essays in this volume understand communities as the product of a continuous process of education and integration of new members. The authors explore how group members learned from one another, and what this teaches us about learning within the context of a high medieval community.

Winner of the 1995 Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History "Important and stimulating."--"History" "This book is concerned with the shaping of the scholarly tradition in the West, and as such it is a brilliant exposition of the charismatic ideals and the intellectual aspirations of the masters and scholars who brought it into being, and whose influence was to linger on almost down to our own time and place."--"Journal of Religious History" "Jaeger has brought together an impressive collection of documents that few know and understand as well as he."--"Speculum" " Jaeger] is utterly convincing on his main points, especially his analysis of eleventh-century materials, where he successfully moves beyond the analysis of literary genre and image to the description of a living educational environment that until now has been difficult to grasp fully. The importance and value of this accomplishment can scarcely be admired enough."--"History of Education Quarterly" "Few medievalists command classical and medieval writings on ethics, morality, manners, ecclesiastical and secular culture, as well as pertinent vitae and correspondence, as does Jaeger. . . . This is a] rich, engaged, and fluently written book."--"Journal of English and Germanic Philology" "Jaeger has produced a fulsome study of a largely unknown era in the history of ideas and higher learning in the Middle Ages. . . . A departure from much of the literature on medieval learning."--"American Historical Review" "The array of scholarship in characterizing five beacons of twelfth century intellectual history--the new charisma--skirts no skirmish yet wins laurels for ingenious and precise analyses to bolster the arguments."--"Arthuriana" " Jaeger] is utterly convincing on his main points, especially his analysis of eleventh-century materials, where he successfully moves beyond the analysis of literary genre and image to the description of a living educational environment that until now has been difficult to grasp fully. The importance and value of this accomplishment can scarcely be admired enough."--"History of Education Quarterly" Before the rise of universities, cathedral schools educated students in a course of studies aimed at perfecting their physical presence, their manners, and their eloquence. The formula of cathedral schools was "letters and manners" (litterae et mores), which asserts a pedagogic program as broad as the modern "letters and science." The main instrument of what C. Stephen Jaeger calls "charismatic pedagogy" was the master's personality, his physical presence radiating a transforming force to his students. In "The Envy of Angels," Jaeger explores this intriguing chapter in the history of ideas and higher learning and opens a new view of intellectual and social life in eleventh- and early twelfth-century Europe. C. Stephen Jaeger is Professor of Germanics and Comparative Literature at the University of Washington. He is the author of "Ennobling Love: In Search of a Lost Sensibility" and "The Origins of Courtliness: Civilizing Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals, 939-1210," both published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. Short copy: An engaging narrative history of the origins of formal education in the West. Winner of the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History, awarded by the American Philosophical Society.

What is the force in art, C. Stephen Jaeger asks, that can enter our consciousness, inspire admiration or imitation, carry a reader or viewer from the world as it is to a world more sublime? We have long recognized the power of individuals to lead or enchant by the force of personal charisma--and indeed, in his award-winning "Envy of Angels," Jaeger himself brilliantly parsed the ability of charismatic teachers to shape the world of medieval learning. In "Enchantment," he turns his attention to a sweeping and multifaceted exploration of the charisma not of individuals but of art.For Jaeger, the charisma of the visual arts, literature, and film functions by creating an exalted semblance of life, a realm of beauty, sublime emotions, heroic motives and deeds, godlike bodies and actions, and superhuman abilities, so as to dazzle the humbled spectator and lift him or her up into the place so represented. Charismatic art makes us want to live in the higher world that it depicts, to behave like its heroes and heroines, and to think and act according to their values. It temporarily weakens individual will and rational critical thought. It brings us into a state of enchantment.Ranging widely across periods and genres, "Enchantment" investigates the charismatic effect of an ancient statue of Apollo on the poet Rilke, of the painter Durer's self-portrayal as a figure of Christ-like magnificence, of a numinous Odysseus washed ashore on Phaeacia, and of the black-and-white projection of Fred Astaire dancing across the Depression-era movie screen. From the tattoos on the face of a Maori tribesman to the haunting visage of Charlotte Rampling in a film by Woody Allen, Jaeger's extraordinary book explores the dichotomies of reality and illusion, life and art that are fundamental to both cultic and aesthetic experience.

What is the force in art, C. Stephen Jaeger asks, that can enter our consciousness, inspire admiration or imitation, and carry a reader or viewer from the world as it is to a world more sublime? We have long recognized the power of individuals to lead or enchant by the force of personal charisma-and indeed, in his award-winning Envy of Angels, Jaeger himself brilliantly parsed the ability of charismatic teachers to shape the world of medieval learning. In Enchantment, he turns his attention to a sweeping and multifaceted exploration of the charisma not of individuals but of art. For Jaeger, the charisma of the visual arts, literature, and film functions by creating an exalted semblance of life, a realm of beauty, sublime emotions, heroic motives and deeds, godlike bodies and actions, and superhuman abilities, so as to dazzle the humbled spectator and lift him or her up into the place so represented. Charismatic art makes us want to live in the higher world that it depicts, to behave like its heroes and heroines, and to think and act according to their values. It temporarily weakens individual will and rational critical thought. It brings us into a state of enchantment. Ranging widely across periods and genres, Enchantment investigates the charismatic effect of an ancient statue of Apollo on the poet Rilke, of the painter Durer's self-portrayal as a figure of Christ-like magnificence, of a numinous Odysseus washed ashore on Phaeacia, and of the black-and-white projection of Fred Astaire dancing across the Depression-era movie screen. From the tattoos on the face of a Maori tribesman to the haunting visage of Charlotte Rampling in a film by Woody Allen, Jaeger's extraordinary book explores the dichotomies of reality and illusion, life and art that are fundamental to both cultic and aesthetic experience.