Download or read book Balaam s Ass Vernacular Theology Before the English Reformation written by Nicholas Watson and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2022-06-21 with total page 617 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over seven hundred years, bodies of writing in vernacular languages served an indispensable role in the religious and intellectual culture of medieval Christian England, yet the character and extent of their importance have been insufficiently recognized. A longstanding identification of medieval western European Christianity with the Latin language and a lack of awareness about the sheer variety and quantity of vernacular religious writing from the English Middle Ages have hampered our understanding of the period, exercising a tenacious hold on much scholarship. Bringing together work across a range of disciplines, including literary study, Christian theology, social history, and the history of institutions, Balaam's Ass attempts the first comprehensive overview of religious writing in early England's three most important vernacular languages, Old English, Insular French, and Middle English, between the ninth and sixteenth centuries. Nicholas Watson argues not only that these texts comprise the oldest continuous tradition of European vernacular writing, but that they are essential to our understanding of how Christianity shaped and informed the lives of individuals, communities, and polities in the Middle Ages. This first of three volumes lays out the long post-Reformation history of the false claim that the medieval Catholic Church was hostile to the vernacular. It analyzes the complicated idea of the vernacular, a medieval innovation instantiated in a huge body of surviving vernacular religious texts. Finally, it focuses on the first, long generation of these writings, in Old English and early Middle English.
Download or read book Forms of Devotion in Early English Poetry written by Jennifer A. Lorden and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-10-31 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Firmly establishes the importance of early affective devotion in the hybrid poetics of the earliest English poetry.
Download or read book Christ the Physician in Late Medieval Religious Controversy written by Patrick Outhwaite and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2024-05-28 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A consideration of the allegory of Christ the Divine Physician in medical and religious writings. Discourses of physical and spiritual health were intricately entwined in the Middle Ages, shaping intellectual concepts as well as actual treatment. The allegory of Christ as Divine Physician is an example of this intersection: it appears frequently in both medical and religious writings as a powerful figure of healing and salvation, and was invoked by dissidents and reformists in religious controversies. Drawing on previously unexplored manuscript material, this book examines the use of the Christus Medicus tradition during a period of religious turbulence. Via an interdisciplinary analysis of literature, sermons, and medical texts, it shows that Wycliffites in England and Hussites in Bohemia used concepts developed in hospital settings to press for increased lay access to Scripture and the sacraments against the strictures of the Church hierarchy. Tracing a story of reform and controversy from localised institutional contexts to two of the most important pan-European councils of the fifteenth century, Constance and Basel, it argues that at a point when the body of the Church was strained by multiple popes, heretics and schismatics, the allegory came into increasing use to restore health and order.
Download or read book The Works of Richard Methley written by Richard Methley and published by Liturgical Press. This book was released on 2021-01-15 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Methley (ca. 1450–1527/8), a Carthusian of Mount Grace, was the last great mystic before the English Reformation. Most of his prolific works are lost, but the treatises translated here display the same kind of experiential, affective, and ecstatic mysticism that is often labeled "feminine." Dating from the 1480s, they include a guide to contemplative prayer, a spiritual diary, and an unknown work on the discernment of spirits. Indebted to Richard Rolle and compared by one of his contemporaries to Margery Kempe, Methley will be an exciting discovery for students of late medieval religion.
Download or read book The Oxford History of Poetry in English written by Julia Boffey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-04-12 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford History of Poetry in English is designed to offer a fresh, multi-voiced, and comprehensive analysis of 'poetry': from Anglo-Saxon culture through contemporary British, Irish, American, and Global culture, including English, Scottish, and Welsh poetry, Anglo-American colonial and post-colonial poetry, and poetry in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean, India, Africa, Asia, and other international locales. The series both synthesizes existing scholarship and presents cutting-edge research, employing a global team of expert contributors for each of the fourteen volumes. This volume explores the developing range of English verse in the century after the death of Chaucer in 1400, years that saw both change and consolidation in traditions of poetic writing in English in the regions of Britain. Chaucer himself was an important shaping presence in the poetry of this period, providing a stimulus to imitation and to creative expansion of the modes he had favoured. In addition to assessing his role, this volume considers a range of literary factors significant to the poetry of the century, including verse forms, literary language, translation, and the idea of the author. It also signals features of the century's history that were important for the production of English verse: responses to wars at home and abroad, dynastic uncertainty, and movements towards religious reform, as well as technological innovations such as the introduction of printing, which brought influential changes to the transmission and reception of verse writing. The volume is shaped to include chapters on the contexts and forms of poetry in English, on the important genres of verse produced in the period, on some of the fifteenth-century's major writers (Lydgate, Hoccleve, Dunbar, and Henryson), and a consideration of the influence of the verse of this century on what was to follow.
Download or read book What Kind of a Thing Is a Middle English Lyric written by Cristina Maria Cervone and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2022-08-30 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What Kind of a Thing Is a Middle English Lyric? considers issues pertaining to a corpus of several hundred short poems written in Middle English between the twelfth and early fifteenth centuries. The chapters draw on perspectives from varied disciplines, including literary criticism, musicology, art history, and cognitive science. Since the early 1900s, the poems have been categorized as “lyrics,” the term now used for most kinds of short poetry, yet neither the difficulties nor the promise of this treatment have received enough attention. In one way, the book argues, considering these poems to be lyrics obscures much of what is interesting about them. Since the nineteenth century, lyrics have been thought of as subjective and best read without reference to cultural context, yet nonetheless they are taken to form a distinct literary tradition. Since Middle English short poems are often communal and usually spoken, sung, and/or danced, this lyric template is not a good fit. In another way, however, the very differences between these poems and the later ones on which current debates about the lyric still focus suggest they have much to offer those debates, and vice versa. As its title suggests, this book thus goes back to the basics, asking fundamental questions about what these poems are, how they function formally and culturally, how they are (and are not) related to other bodies of short poetry, and how they might illuminate and be illuminated by contemporary lyric scholarship. Eleven chapters by medievalists and two responses by modernists, all in careful conversation with one another, reflect on these questions and suggest very different answers. The editors’ introduction synthesizes these answers by suggesting that these poems can most usefully be read as a kind of “play,” in several senses of that word. The book ends with eight “new Middle English lyrics” by seven contemporary poets.
Download or read book Preaching and Narrative in Piers Plowman written by Alastair Bennett and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-01-11 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Langland's Piers Plowman was written and read during a "golden age" of English preaching. The poem describes a world where sermons took many different forms and were delivered in many different contexts, from public events in the life of the realm to pastoral instruction in the parish. It dramatises preaching as part of its allegorical action, showing how sermons shaped their listeners' understanding of the world; it also includes polemical critique of corrupt, self-interested preaching, and offers radical prescriptions for its reform. This book argues that Langland's central insight into the way that sermons moved and engaged their audiences had to do with their characteristic use of narrative. Preachers in the poem address listeners who are absorbed in the concerns of their present moment, and encourage them to new forms of social and spiritual endeavour by locating that moment in a larger, interpreted plot: the story of an individual life, or an emergent community, or of salvation history as a whole. The book employs a critical vocabulary derived from Paul Ricoeur to describe the process by which these narratives are composed, and to show how they mediate and reconfigure their listeners' experiences.
Download or read book Women and Devotional Literature in the Middle Ages written by Cate Gunn and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2023-11-07 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays on women and devotional literature in the Middle Ages in commemoration and celebration of the respected feminist scholar Catherine Innes-Parker. Silence was a much-lauded concept in the Middle Ages, particularly in the context of religious literature directed at women. Based on the Pauline prescription that women should neither preach nor teach, and should at all times keep speech to a minimum, the concept of silence lay at the forefront of many devotional texts, particularly those associated with various forms of women's religious enclosure. Following the example of the Virgin Mary, religious women were exhorted to speak seldom, and then only seriously and devoutly. However, as this volume shows, such gendered exhortations to silence were often more rhetorical than literal. The contributions range widely: they consider the English 'Wooing Group' texts and female-authored visionary writings from the Saxon nunnery of Helfta in the thirteenth century; works by Richard Rolle and the Dutch mystic Jan van Ruusbroec in the fourteenth century; Anglo-French treatises, and books housed in the library of the English noblewoman Cecily Neville in the fifteenth century; and the resonant poetics of women from non-Christian cultures. But all demonstrate the ways in which silence, rather than being a mere absence of speech, frequently comprised a form of gendered articulation and proto-feminist point of resistance. They thus provide an apt commemoration and celebration of the deeply innovative work of Catherine Innes-Parker (1956-2019), the respected feminist scholar and a pioneer of this important field of study.
Download or read book The Routledge History of Medieval Magic written by Sophie Page and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 769 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge History of Medieval Magic brings together the work of scholars from across Europe and North America to provide extensive insights into recent developments in the study of medieval magic between c.1100 and c.1500. This book covers a wide range of topics, including the magical texts which circulated in medieval Europe, the attitudes of intellectuals and churchmen to magic, the ways in which magic intersected with other aspects of medieval culture, and the early witch trials of the fifteenth century. In doing so, it offers the reader a detailed look at the impact that magic had within medieval society, such as its relationship to gender roles, natural philosophy, and courtly culture. This is furthered by the book’s interdisciplinary approach, containing chapters dedicated to archaeology, literature, music, and visual culture, as well as texts and manuscripts. The Routledge History of Medieval Magic also outlines how research on this subject could develop in the future, highlighting under-explored subjects, unpublished sources, and new approaches to the topic. It is the ideal book for both established scholars and students of medieval magic.
Download or read book A Companion to Chaucer written by Peter Brown and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Designed as both a contribution to original research and as a stimulating and accessible text, this volume is a helpful, reliable, responsive and adaptable resource for students of Chaucer at all levels.
Download or read book Language and Culture in Medieval Britain written by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2013 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume form a new cultural history focused round, but not confined to, the presence and interactions of francophone speakers, writers, readers, texts and documents in England from the 11th to the later 15th century.
Download or read book Passionate Imaginings written by Lisa Manter and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Vernacular Christianity written by Wendy James and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom written by Andrew Dickson White and published by . This book was released on 1898 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book New Medieval Literatures written by and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Sovereignty of God written by A. W. Pink and published by Whitaker House. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "From every pulpit in the land it needs to be thundered forth that God still lives, that God still observes, that God still reigns. Faith is now in the crucible, it is being tested by fire, and there is no fixed and sufficient resting place for the heart and mind but in the throne of God. What is needed now, as never before, is a full, positive, constructive setting forth of the Godhood of God." —A. W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God Who is actually in control of this world? Man? The devil? God? In this unabridged, best-selling classic, A. W. Pink tackles such profound questions in straight-forward language that the average Christian will find not only understandable but totally engaging. Pink explains that God's sovereignty is characterized in creation and in salvation, and then he describes its relationship to human will. Finally, Pink addresses the proper attitude believers should take toward God's sovereignty. Ultimately, Pink strongly believed that true faith rests "not in the wisdom of men but in the power of God." Pink was a student of theologians like St. Augustine, St. Aquinas, Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards, and his writing reflects it. Today, he is considered one of the most influential evangelical authors in the twentieth century.
Download or read book The Consolation of Philosophy as Cosmic Image written by Myra L. Uhlfelder and published by Renaissance Society of America. This book was released on 2018 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study, Uhlfelder (recently deceased) argues convincingly that, in portraying his literary persona as an exemplum of man in his quest for self-knowledge, Boethius has made the whole Consolatio a cosmic image representing man as microcosm. The mental faculties of sensus, imaginatio, ratio, and intellegentia are arranged as a proportion suggesting both Plato's famous "divided line" at the end of Book 6 of the Republic and, at the same time, the four elements of the physical cosmos which, according to the Platonic Timaeus, are connected with one another so as to form a geometrical proportion. The philosophical argument of the Consolatio in books II through V comprises another cosmic image with III. M.9 at its exact center; in addition, the other three cosmic depictions, revolving as concentric circles around III. M.9, may be viewed as forming an image of cosmic order. In its structure, then, Boethius' work is an anagogic eikon which formally depicts its content.
