Download or read book History and the Supernatural in Medieval England written by Carl S. Watkins and published by . This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book History and the Supernatural in Medieval England written by C. S. Watkins and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-11-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a fascinating study of religious culture in England from 1050 to 1250. Drawing on the wealth of material about religious belief and practice that survives in the chronicles, Carl Watkins explores the accounts of signs, prophecies, astrology, magic, beliefs about death, and the miraculous and demonic. He challenges some of the prevailing assumptions about religious belief, questioning in particular the attachment of many historians to terms such as 'clerical' and 'lay', 'popular' and 'elite', 'Christian' and 'pagan' as explanatory categories. The evidence of the chronicles is also set in its broader context through explorations of miracle collections, penitential manuals, exempla and sermons. The book traces shifts in the way the supernatural was conceptualized by learned writers and the ways in which broader patterns of belief evolved during this period. This original account sheds important light on belief during a period in which the religious landscape was transformed.
Download or read book Magic and the Supernatural in Medieval English Romance written by Corinne J. Saunders and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2010 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This study looks at a wide range of medieval Englisih romance texts, including the works of Chaucer and Malory, from a broad cultural perspective, to show that while they employ magic in order to create exotic, escapist worlds, they are also grounded in a sense of possibility, and reflect a complex web of inherited and current ideas." --Book Jacket.
Download or read book The Natural and the Supernatural in the Middle Ages written by Robert Bartlett and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-03-17 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploration of how medieval people categorized the world, concentrating on the division between the natural and the supernatural.
Download or read book Supernatural Encounters written by Stephen Gordon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-12-06 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The belief in the reality of demons and the restless dead formed a central facet of the medieval worldview. Whether a pestilent-spreading corpse mobilised by the devil, a purgatorial spirit returning to earth to ask for suffrage, or a shape-shifting demon intent on crushing its victims as they slept, encounters with supernatural entities were often met with consternation and fear. Chroniclers, hagiographers, sermon writers, satirists, poets, and even medical practitioners utilised the cultural ‘text’ of the supernatural encounter in many different ways, showcasing the multiplicity of contemporary attitudes to death, disease, and the afterlife. In this volume, Stephen Gordon explores the ways in which conflicting ideas about the intention and agency of supernatural entities were understood and articulated in different social and literary contexts. Focusing primarily on material from medieval England, c.1050–1450, Gordon discusses how writers such as William of Malmesbury, William of Newburgh, Walter Map, John Mirk, and Geoffrey Chaucer utilised the belief in demons, nightmares, and walking corpses for pointed critical effect. Ultimately, this monograph provides new insights into the ways in which the broad ontological category of the ‘revenant’ was conceptualised in the medieval world.
Download or read book Magic and Religion in Medieval England written by Catherine Rider and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2013-02-15 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Middle Ages, many occult rituals and beliefs existed and were practiced alongside those officially sanctioned by the church. While educated clergy condemned some of these as magic, many of these practices involved religious language, rituals, or objects. For instance, charms recited to cure illnesses invoked God and the saints, and love spells used consecrated substances such as the Eucharist. Magic and Religion in Medieval England explores the entanglement of magical practices and the clergy during the Middle Ages, uncovering how churchmen decided which of these practices to deem acceptable and examining the ways they persuaded others to adopt their views. Covering the period from 1215 to the Reformation, Catherine Rider traces the change in the church’s attitude to vernacular forms of magic. She shows how this period brought the clergy more closely into contact with unofficial religious practices than ever before, and how this proximity prompted them to draw up precise guidelines on distinguishing magic from legitimate religion. Revealing the necessity of improving clerical education and the pastoral care of the laity, Magic and Religion in Medieval England provides a fascinating picture of religious life during this period.
Download or read book Ghosts A Social History vol 1 written by Owen Davies and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-08-01 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reveals changing perceptions of ghosts at different social levels from the Reformation through to the twentieth century in Britain and America. This five-volume set focuses on the key published debates that emerged in each century, and illustrates the range of literary formats that reported or discussed ghosts.
Download or read book Fantastic histories written by Victoria Flood and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2024-05-28 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fantastic Histories explores the political and cultural contexts of the entry of fairies to the historical record in twelfth century England, and the subsequent uses of fairy narratives in both insular and continental history and romance. It traces the uses of the fairy as a contested marker of historicity and fictionality in the histories of Gerald of Wales and Walter Map, the continental mirabilia of Gervase of Tilbury, and the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century French Mélusine romances and their early English reception. Working across insular and continental source material, Fantastic Histories explores the practices of history-writing, fiction-making, and the culturally determined boundaries of wonder that defined the limits of medieval history.
Download or read book The Linguistic Past in Twelfth Century Britain written by Sara Harris and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-12 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How was the complex history of Britain's languages understood by twelfth-century authors? This book argues that the social, political and linguistic upheavals that occurred in the wake of the Norman Conquest intensified later interest in the historicity of languages. An atmosphere of enquiry fostered vernacular literature's prestige and led to a newfound sense of how ancient languages could be used to convey historical claims. The vernacular hence became an important site for the construction and memorialisation of dynastic, institutional and ethnic identities. This study demonstrates the breadth of interest in the linguistic past across different social groups and the striking variety of genre used to depict it, including romance, legal translation, history, poetry and hagiography. Through a series of detailed case studies, Sara Harris shows how specific works represent key aspects of the period's imaginative engagement with English, Brittonic, Latin and French language development.
Download or read book Seasons in the Literatures of the Medieval North written by P. S. Langeslag and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2015 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh examination of how the seasons are depicted in medieval literature.
Download or read book Legends Tradition and History in Medieval England written by Antonia Gransden and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2010-07-15 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this collection of essays, Antonia Gransden brings out the virtues of medieval writers and highlights their attitudes and habits of thought. She traces the continuing influence of Bede, the greatest of early medieval English historians, from his death to the 16th century. Bede's clarity and authority were welcomed by generations of monastic historians. At the other end is a humble 14th-century chronicle produced at Lynn with little to add other than a few local references.
Download or read book Otherworlds written by Aisling Nora Byrne and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a new perspective on the "otherworlds" of medieval literature. These fantastical realms are among the most memorable places in medieval writing, by turns beautiful and monstrous, alluring and terrifying. Passing over a river or sea, or entering into a hollow hill, heroes come upon strange and magical realms. These places are often very beautiful, filled with sweet music, and adorned with precious stones and rich materials. There is often no darkness, time may pass at a different pace, and the people who dwell there are usually supernatural. Sometimes such a place is exactly what it appears to be--the land of heart's desire--but, the otherworld can also have a sinister side, trapping humans and keeping them there against their will. Otherworlds: Fantasy and History in Medieval Literature takes a fresh look at how medieval writers understood these places and why they found them so compelling. It focuses on texts from England, but places this material in the broader context of literary production in medieval Britain and Ireland. The narratives examined in this book tell a rather surprising story about medieval notions of these fantastical places. Otherworlds are actually a lot less "other" than they might initially seem. Authors often use the idea of the otherworld to comment on very serious topics. It is not unusual for otherworld depictions to address political issues in the historical world. Most intriguing of all are those texts where locations in the real world are re-imagined as otherworlds. The regions on which this book focuses, Britain, Ireland, and the surrounding islands, prove particularly susceptible to this characterization.
Download or read book The Supernatural in Tudor and Stuart England written by Darren Oldridge and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-31 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Supernatural in Tudor and Stuart England reflects upon the boundaries between the natural and the otherworldly in early modern England as they were understood by the people of the time. The book places supernatural beliefs and events in the context of the English Reformation to show how early modern people reacted to the world of unseen spirits and magical influences. It sets out the conceptual foundations of early modern encounters with the supernatural, and shows how occult beliefs penetrated almost every aspect of life. Darren Oldridge considers many of the spiritual forces that pervaded early modern England: an immanent God who sometimes expressed Himself through ‘signs and wonders’ and the various lesser inhabitants of the world of spirits including ghosts, goblins, demons and angels. He explores human attempts to comprehend, harness or accommodate these powers through magic and witchcraft, and the role of the supernatural in early modern science. This book presents a concise and accessible up-to-date synthesis of the scholarship of the supernatural in Tudor and Stuart England. It will be essential reading for students of early modern England, religion, witchcraft and the supernatural.
Download or read book The Oxford English Literary History written by Laura Ashe and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-15 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford English Literary History is the new century's definitive account of a rich and diverse literary heritage that stretches back for a millennium and more. Each of these thirteen groundbreaking volumes offers a leading scholar's considered assessment of the authors, works, cultural traditions, events, and ideas that shaped the literary voices of their age. The series will enlighten and inspire not only everyone studying, teaching, and researching in English Literature, but all serious readers. This book describes and seeks to explain the vast cultural, literary, social, and political transformations which characterized the period 1000-1350. Change can be perceived everywhere at this time. Theology saw the focus shift from God the Father to the suffering Christ, while religious experience became ever more highly charged with emotional affectivity and physical devotion. A new philosophy of interiority turned attention inward, to the exploration of self, and the practice of confession expressed that interior reality with unprecedented importance. The old understanding of penitence as a whole and unrepeatable event, a second baptism, was replaced by a new allowance for repeated repentance and penance, and the possibility of continued purgation of sins after death. The concept of love moved centre stage: in Christ's love as a new explanation for the Passion; in the love of God as the only means of governing the self; and in the appearance of narrative fiction, where heterosexual love was suddenly represented as the goal of secular life. In this mode of writing further emerged the figure of the individual, a unique protagonist bound in social and ethical relation with others; from this came a profound recalibration of moral agency, with reference not only to God but to society. More generally, the social and ethical status of secular lives was drastically elevated by the creation and celebration of courtly and chivalric ideals. In England the ideal of kingship was forged and reforged over these centuries, in intimate relation with native ideals of counsel and consent, bound by the law. In the aftermath of Magna Carta, and as parliament grew in reach and importance, a politics of the public sphere emerged, with a literature to match. These vast transformations have long been observed and documented in their separate fields. The Oxford English Literary History: Volume 1: 1000-1350: Conquest and Transformation offers an account of these changes by which they are all connected, and explicable in terms of one another.
Download or read book Medieval Ghost Stories written by Andrew Joynes and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2006 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Medieval Ghost Stories" is a collection of ghostly occurrences from the eighth to the fourteenth centuries; they have been found in monastic chronicles and preaching manuals, in sagas and heroic poetry, and in medieval romances. In a religious age, the tales bore a peculiar freight of spooks and spirituality which can still make hair stand on end; unfailingly, these stories give a fascinating and moving glimpse into the medieval mind. Look only at the accounts of Richard Rowntree's stillborn child, glimpsed by his father tangled in swaddling clothes on the road to Santiago, or the sly habits of water sprites resting as goblets and golden rings on the surface of the river, just out of reach...
Download or read book Heaven and Earth in Anglo Saxon England written by Helen Foxhall Forbes and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christian theology and religious belief were crucially important to Anglo-Saxon society, and are manifest in the surviving textual, visual and material evidence. This is the first full-length study investigating how Christian theology and religious beliefs permeated society and underpinned social values in early medieval England. The influence of the early medieval Church as an institution is widely acknowledged, but Christian theology itself is generally considered to have been accessible only to a small educated elite. This book shows that theology had a much greater and more significant impact than has been recognised. An examination of theology in its social context, and how it was bound up with local authorities and powers, reveals a much more subtle interpretation of secular processes, and shows how theological debate affected the ways that religious and lay individuals lived and died. This was not a one-way flow, however: this book also examines how social and cultural practices and interests affected the development of theology in Anglo-Saxon England, and how ’popular’ belief interacted with literary and academic traditions. Through case-studies, this book explores how theological debate and discussion affected the personal perspectives of Christian Anglo-Saxons, including where possible those who could not read. In all of these, it is clear that theology was not detached from society or from the experiences of lay people, but formed an essential constituent part.
Download or read book Twilight of the Godlings written by Francis Young and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-03-31 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the recorded history of Britain, belief in earthbound spirits presiding over nature, the home and human destiny has been a feature of successive cultures. From the localised deities of Britannia to the Anglo-Saxons' elves and the fairies of late medieval England, Britain's godlings have populated a shadowy, secretive realm of ritual and belief running parallel to authorised religion. Twilight of the Godlings delves deep into the elusive history of these supernatural beings, tracing their evolution from the pre-Roman Iron Age to the end of the Middle Ages. Arguing that accreted cultural assumptions must be cast aside in order to understand the godlings – including the cherished idea that these folkloric creatures are the decayed remnants of pagan gods and goddesses – this bold, revisionist book traces Britain's 'small gods' to a popular religiosity influenced by classical learning. It offers an exciting new way of grasping the island's most mysterious mythical inhabitants.
