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Drawing on a wealth of sources from different disciplines, the
essays here provide a nuanced picture of how medieval and early
modern societies viewed murder and dealt with murderers. Murder -
the perpetrators, victims, methods and motives - has been the
subject of law, literature, chronicles and religion, often crossing
genres and disciplines and employing multiple modes of expression
and interpretation. As the chapters in this volume demonstrate,
definitions of murder, manslaughter and justified or unjustified
homicide depend largely on the legal terminology and the laws of
the society. Much like modern nations, medieval societies treated
murder and murderers differently based on their social standing,
the social standing of the victim, their gender, their mental
capacity for understanding their crime, and intent, motive and
means. The three parts of this volume explore different aspects of
this crime in the Middle Ages. The first provides the legal
template for reading cases of murder in a variety of sources. The
second examines the public hermeneutics of murder, especially
theways in which medieval societies interpreted and contextualised
their textual traditions: Icelandic sagas, Old French fabliaux,
Arthuriana and accounts of assassination. Finally, the third part
focuses on the effects of murder within the community: murder as a
social ill, especially in killing kin.
This collection honours the scholarship of Professor David F.
Johnson, exploring the wider view of medieval England and its
cultural contracts with the Low Countries, and highlighting common
texts, motifs, and themes across the textual traditions of Old
English and later medieval romances in both English and Middle
Dutch. Few scholars have contributed as much to the wider view of
medieval England and its cultural contacts with the Low Countries
than Professor David F. Johnson. His wide-ranging scholarship
embraces both the textual traditions of Old English, especially in
manuscript production, and later medieval romances in both English
and Middle Dutch, highlighting their common texts, motifs, and
themes. Taking Johnson's work as its starting point and model, the
essays collected here investigate early English manuscript
production and preservation, illuminating the complexities of
reinterpreting Old English poetry, particularly Beowulf, and then
go on to pursue those nuances through later English and Middle
Dutch Arthurian romances and drama, including Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight, The Canterbury Tales, and the Roman van Walewein.
They explore a plethora of material, including early medieval
textual traditions and stone sculpture, and draw on a range of
approaches, such as Body and Disability Theories. Overall, the aim
is to bring multiple disciplines into dialogue with each other, in
order to present a richer and more nuanced view of the medieval
literary past and cross-cultural contact between England and the
Low Countries, from the pre-Conquest period to the late-Middle
Ages, thus forming a most appropriate tribute to Professor
Johnson's pioneering work.
A new look at the way in which medieval European literature depicts
torture and brutality. An ugly subject, but one that needs to be
treated thoroughly and comprehensively, with a discreet wit and no
excessive relish. These needs are richly satisfied in Larissa
Tracy's bold and important book. DEREK PEARSALL, ProfessorEmeritus,
Harvard University. Torture - that most notorious aspect of
medieval culture and society - has evolved into a dominant
mythology, suggesting that the Middle Ages was a period during
which sadistic torment wasinflicted on citizens with impunity and
without provocation: popular museums displaying such gruesome
implements as the rack, the strappado, the gridiron, the wheel, and
the Iron Maiden can be found in many modern European cities.These
lurid images of medieval torture have re-emerged within recent
discussions on American foreign policy and the introduction of
torture legislation as a weapon in the "War on Terror", and raised
questions about its history and reality, particularly given its
proliferation in some literary genres and its relative absence in
others. This book challenges preconceived ideas about the
prevalence of torture and judicial brutality in medieval society
byarguing that their portrayal in literature is not mimetic.
Instead, it argues that the depictions of torture and brutality
represent satire, critique and dissent; they have didactic and
political functions in opposing the statusquo. Torture and
brutality are intertextual literary motifs that negotiate cultural
anxieties of national identity; by situating these practices
outside their own boundaries in the realm of the barbarian "Other",
medieval and early-modern authors define themselves and their
nations in opposition to them. Works examined range from Chaucer to
the Scandinavian sagas to Shakespeare, enabling a true comparative
approach to be taken. Larissa Tracy isAssociate Professor, Longwood
University.
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Arthurian Literature XXXII (Hardcover)
Elizabeth Archibald, David F. Johnson; Contributions by David Eugene Clark, Jaakko Tahkokallio, Larissa Tracy, …
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Arthurian Literature has established its position as the home for a
great diversity of new research into Arthurian matters. It delivers
fascinating material across genres, periods, and theoretical
issues. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT The essays collected here put
considerable emphasis on Arthurian narratives in material culture
and historical context, as well as on purely literary analysis, a
reminder of the enormous range of interests in Arthurian
narrativesin the Middle Ages, in a number of different contexts.
The volume opens with a study of torture in texts from Chretien to
Malory, and on English law and attitudes in particular. Several
contributors discuss the undeservedly neglected Stanzaic Morte
Arthur, a key source for Malory. His Morte Darthur is the focus of
several essays, respectively on the sources of the "Tale of Sir
Gareth"; battle scenes and the importance of chivalric kingship;
Cicero's De amicitia and the mixed blessings and dangers of
fellowship; and comparison of concluding formulae in the Winchester
Manuscript and Caxton's edition. Seven tantalizing fragments of
needlework, all depictingTristan, are discussed in terms of the
heraldic devices they include. The volume ends with an update on
newly discovered manuscripts of Geoffrey of Monmouth's seminal
Historia regum Britanniae, the twelfth-century best-seller which
launched Arthur's literary career. Elizabeth Archibald is Professor
of English Studies at Durham University, and Principal of St
Cuthbert's Society; David F. Johnson is Professor of English at
Florida State University, Tallahassee. Contibutors: David Eugene
Clark, Marco Nievergelt, Ralph Norris, Sarah Randles, Lisa Robeson,
Richard Severe, Jaakko Tahkokallio, Larissa Tracy
Essays exploring medieval castration, as reflected in archaeology,
law, historical record, and literary motifs. Castration and
castrati have always been facets of western culture, from myth and
legend to law and theology, from eunuchs guarding harems to the
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century castrati singers. Metaphoric
castration pervadesa number of medieval literary genres,
particularly the Old French fabliaux - exchanges of power
predicated upon the exchange or absence of sexual desire signified
by genitalia - but the plain, literal act of castration and its
implications are often overlooked. This collection explores this
often taboo subject and its implications for cultural mores and
custom in Western Europe, seeking to demystify and demythologize
castration. Its subjects includearchaeological studies of eunuchs;
historical accounts of castration in trials of combat; the
mutilation of political rivals in medieval Wales; Anglo-Saxon and
Frisian legal and literary examples of castration as punishment;
castration as comedy in the Old French fabliaux; the prohibition
against genital mutilation in hagiography; and early-modern
anxieties about punitive castration enacted on the Elizabethan
stage. The introduction reflects on these topics in the context of
arguably the most well-known victim of castration in the middle
ages, Abelard. LARISSA TRACY is Associate Professor of Medieval
Literature at Longwood University. Contributors: Larissa Tracy,
Kathryn Reusch, Shaun Tougher, Jack Collins, Rolf H. Bremmer Jr,
Jay Paul Gates, Charlene M. Eska, Mary A. Valante, Anthony Adams,
Mary E. Leech, Jed Chandler, Ellen Lorraine Friedrich, Robert L.A.
Clark, Karin Sellberg, LenaWanggren
A new look at the way in which medieval European literature depicts
torture and brutality. An ugly subject, but one that needs to be
treated thoroughly and comprehensively, with a discreet wit and no
excessive relish. These needs are richly satisfied in Larissa
Tracy's bold and important book. DEREK PEARSALL, ProfessorEmeritus,
Harvard University. Torture - that most notorious aspect of
medieval culture and society - has evolved into a dominant
mythology, suggesting that the Middle Ages was a period during
which sadistic torment wasinflicted on citizens with impunity and
without provocation: popular museums displaying such gruesome
implements as the rack, the strappado, the gridiron, the wheel, and
the Iron Maiden can be found in many modern European cities.These
lurid images of medieval torture have re-emerged within recent
discussions on American foreign policy and the introduction of
torture legislation as a weapon in the "War on Terror", and raised
questions about its history and reality, particularly given its
proliferation in some literary genres and its relative absence in
others. This book challenges preconceived ideas about the
prevalence of torture and judicial brutality in medieval society
byarguing that their portrayal in literature is not mimetic.
Instead, it argues that the depictions of torture and brutality
represent satire, critique and dissent; they have didactic and
political functions in opposing the statusquo. Torture and
brutality are intertextual literary motifs that negotiate cultural
anxieties of national identity; by situating these practices
outside their own boundaries in the realm of the barbarian "Other",
medieval and early-modern authors define themselves and their
nations in opposition to them. Works examined range from Chaucer to
the Scandinavian sagas to Shakespeare, enabling a true comparative
approach to be taken. Larissa Tracy isAssociate Professor, Longwood
University.
The practice and the representation of flaying in the middle ages
and after are considered in this provocative collection. Skin is
the parchment upon which identity is written; class, race,
ethnicity, and gender are all legible upon the human surface.
Removing skin tears away identity, and leaves a blank slate upon
which law, punishment, sanctity, ormonstrosity can be inscribed;
whether as an act of penal brutality, as a comic device, or as a
sign of spiritual sacrifice, it leaves a lasting impression about
the qualities and nature of humanity. Flaying often functioned as
animaginative resource for medieval and early modern artists and
writers, even though it seems to have been rarely practiced in
reality. From images of Saint Bartholomew holding his skin in his
arms, to scenes of execution in Havelok the Dane, to laws that
prescribed it as a punishment for treason, this volume explores the
idea and the reality of skin removal - flaying - in the Middle
Ages. It interrogates the connection between reality and
imagination in depictions of literal skin removal, rather than
figurative or theoretical interpretations of flaying, and offers a
multilayered view of medieval and early modern perceptions of
flaying and its representations in Europeanculture. Its two parts
consider practice and representation, capturing the evolution of
flaying as both an idea and a practice in the premodern world.
Larissa Tracy is Associate Professor, Longwood University.
Contributors: Frederika Bain, Peter Dent, Kelly DeVries, Valerie
Gramling, Perry Neil Harrison, Jack Hartnell, Emily Leverett,
Michael Livingston, Sherry C.M. Lindquist, Asa Mittman, Mary
Rambaran-Olm, William Sayers, Christine Sciacca, Susan Small,
Larissa Tracy, Renée Ward
Drawing on a wealth of sources from different disciplines, the
essays here provide a nuanced picture of how medieval and early
modern societies viewed murder and dealt with murderers. Murder -
the perpetrators, victims, methods and motives - has been the
subject of law, literature, chronicles and religion, often crossing
genres and disciplines and employing multiple modes of expression
and interpretation. As the chapters in this volume demonstrate,
definitions of murder, manslaughter and justified or unjustified
homicide depend largely on the legal terminology and the laws of
the society. Much like modern nations, medieval societies treated
murder and murderers differently based on their social standing,
the social standing of the victim, their gender, their mental
capacity for understanding their crime, and intent, motive and
means. The three parts of this volume explore different aspects of
this crime in the Middle Ages. The first provides the legal
template for reading cases of murder in a variety of sources. The
second examines the public hermeneutics of murder, especially
theways in which medieval societies interpreted and contextualised
their textual traditions: Icelandic sagas, Old French fabliaux,
Arthuriana and accounts of assassination. Finally, the third part
focuses on the effects of murder within the community: murder as a
social ill, especially in killing kin. LARISSA TRACY is Professor
of Medieval Literature at Longwood University. Contributors: Dianne
Berg, G. Koolemans Beynen, Dwayne C. Coleman, Jeffrey Doolittle,
Carmel Ferragud, Jay Paul Gates, Thomas Gobbitt, Emily J.
Hutchison, Jolanta N. Komornicka, Anne Latowsky, Matthew Lubin,
Andrew McKenzie-McHarg, Ben Parsons, Ilse Schweitzer VanDonkelaar,
Hannah Skoda, Bridgette Slavin, Larissa Tracy, Patricia Turning,
Lucas Wood
Essays exploring medieval castration, as reflected in archaeology,
law, historical record, and literary motifs. Castration and
castrati have always been facets of western culture, from myth and
legend to law and theology, from eunuchs guarding harems to the
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century castrati singers. Metaphoric
castration pervadesa number of medieval literary genres,
particularly the Old French fabliaux - exchanges of power
predicated upon the exchange or absence of sexual desire signified
by genitalia - but the plain, literal act of castration and its
implications are often overlooked. This collection explores this
often taboo subject and its implications for cultural mores and
custom in Western Europe, seeking to demystify and demythologize
castration. Its subjects includearchaeological studies of eunuchs;
historical accounts of castration in trials of combat; the
mutilation of political rivals in medieval Wales; Anglo-Saxon and
Frisian legal and literary examples of castration as punishment;
castration as comedy in the Old French fabliaux; the prohibition
against genital mutilation in hagiography; and early-modern
anxieties about punitive castration enacted on the Elizabethan
stage. The introduction reflects on these topics in the context of
arguably the most well-known victim of castration in the middle
ages, Abelard. Larissa Tracy is Associate Professor of Medieval
Literature at Longwood University. Contributors: Larissa Tracy,
Kathryn Reusch, Shaun Tougher, Jack Collins, Rolf H. Bremmer Jr,
Jay Paul Gates, Charlene M. Eska, Mary A. Valante, Anthony Adams,
Mary E. Leech, Jed Chandler, Ellen Lorraine Friedrich, Robert L.A.
Clark, Karin Sellberg, LenaWånggren
The first modern translation of one of the most influential books
to come from the middle ages. The Gilte Legende was widely read as
a model for everyday life, including the education of women through
examples set by early Christian martyrs. This book divides the
lives of female saints into: the "ryght hooly virgins",who vocally
defend their bodies against Roman persecution; "holy mothers", who
give up their traditional role to pursue a life of contemplation;
the "repentant sinners", who convert and voice their defiance
against a society thatdemanded silence in women; and the "holy
transvestites", who cast off their gender identity to find
absolution and salvation. Their lives reach through the ages to
speak to a modern audience, forcing a re-examination of women's
roles in the medieval period. LARISSA TRACY is Adjunct Assistant
Professor of English at Georgetown University and George Mason
University. Series editor JANE CHANCE
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