Download or read book Patrons and Patron Saints in Early Modern English Literature written by Alison Chapman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-17 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book visits the fact that, in the pre-modern world, saints and lords served structurally similar roles, acting as patrons to those beneath them on the spiritual or social ladder with the word "patron" used to designate both types of elite sponsor. Chapman argues that this elision of patron saints and patron lords remained a distinctive feature of the early modern English imagination and that it is central to some of the key works of literature in the period. Writers like Jonson, Shakespeare, Spenser, Drayton, Donne and, Milton all use medieval patron saints in order to represent and to challenge early modern ideas of patronage -- not just patronage in the narrow sense of the immediate economic relations obtaining between client and sponsor, but also patronage as a society-wide system of obligation and reward that itself crystallized a whole culture’s assumptions about order and degree. The works studied in this book -- ranging from Shakespeare’s 2 Henry VI, written early in the 1590s, to Milton’s Masque Performed at Ludlow Castle, written in 1634 -- are patronage works, either aimed at a specific patron or showing a keen awareness of the larger patronage system. This volume challenges the idea that the early modern world had shrugged off its own medieval past, instead arguing that Protestant writers in the period were actively using the medieval Catholic ideal of the saint as a means to represent contemporary systems of hierarchy and dependence. Saints had been the ideal -- and idealized -- patrons of the medieval world and remained so for early modern English recusants. As a result, their legends and iconographies provided early modern Protestant authors with the perfect tool for thinking about the urgent and complex question of who owed allegiance to whom in a rapidly changing world.

Download or read book The Renaissance of the Saints After Reform written by Gina M. Di Salvo and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-09-28 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The age of miracles was not yet past on the Shakespearean stage. In the first book-length study of the English saint play across the Reformation divide, The Renaissance of the Saints after Reform recovers the surprisingly long theatrical life of the saints from a tenth-century monastery to the Restoration stage. Through a reassessment of archival records of performance and religious change, this book challenges the established history of the saint play as a product of medieval devotional culture that ended with the national conversion to Protestantism during the Reformation. Not only did saints in performance frequently diverge from the narratives of devotional literature during the Middle Ages but also saints made a spectacular reappearance in the theatre of the early modern era. In the rupture between those two eras, the English church separated itself from the Cult of the Saints, and saints disappeared from public view until sainthood transformed from a matter of theology into a matter of theatricality. Early modern saint plays document a post-Reformation culture committed to saints-but not all saints. Certain ancient martyrs and British saints returned to the liturgical calendar in the Elizabethan Book of Common Prayer. This limited inventory performed an initial de-Catholicization of these saints, but it did not recover their lives. Instead, the theatre produced new lives of the saints for the English public. A period of experimentation with saints and devils in the 1590s was followed by unprecedented innovation throughout the Stuart era. This book traces the transformation of sainthood in early modern drama from ambiguous supernatural association and negotiated patronage to a renaissance of miraculous theatricality and sacred place-making. By excavating saints in plays by Shakespeare, Heywood, Dekker, Massinger, and Rowley as well as plays authored by relatively unknown dramatists, this book reconfigures how we think about the legacy of late medieval religious culture, the impact of Reformation change on literary texts and social practices, and the development of English theatre and drama.

Download or read book The Subject Medieval Modern written by Peter Haidu and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work presents a thorough historicist account of the development of subjectivity in the medieval period, as traced in medieval literature and historical documentation.

Download or read book Feeling Like Saints written by Fiona Somerset and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-08 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Lollard" is the name given to followers of John Wyclif, the English dissident theologian who was dismissed from Oxford University in 1381 for his arguments regarding the eucharist. A forceful and influential critic of the ecclesiastical status quo in the late fourteenth century, Wyclif's thought was condemned at the Council of Constance in 1415. While lollardy has attracted much attention in recent years, much of what we think we know about this English religious movement is based on records of heresy trials and anti-lollard chroniclers. In Feeling Like Saints, Fiona Somerset demonstrates that this approach has limitations. A better basis is the five hundred or so manuscript books from the period (1375–1530) containing materials translated, composed, or adapted by lollard writers themselves.These writings provide rich evidence for how lollard writers collaborated with one another and with their readers to produce a distinctive religious identity based around structures of feeling. Lollards wanted to feel like saints. From Wyclif they drew an extraordinarily rigorous ethic of mutual responsibility that disregarded both social status and personal risk. They recalled their commitment to this ethic by reading narratives of physical suffering and vindication, metaphorically martyring themselves by inviting scorn for their zeal, and enclosing themselves in the virtues rather than the religious cloister. Yet in many ways they were not that different from their contemporaries, especially those with similar impulses to exceptional holiness.

Download or read book Disembodied Heads in Medieval and Early Modern Culture written by Barbara Baert and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-07-18 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discussing medieval and early modern 'disembodied heads' this collection questions the why and how of the primacy of the head in the bodily hierarchy during the premodern period. On the basis of beliefs, mythologies and traditions concerning the head, they come to an ‘cultural anatomy’ of the head.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theology 1600 1800 written by Ulrich L. Lehner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 689 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text provides a comprehensive and reliable introduction to Christian theological literature originating in Western Europe from, roughly, the end of the French Wars of Religion (1598) to the Congress of Vienna (1815). Using a variety of approaches, the contributors examine theology spanning from Bossuet to Jonathan Edwards.

Download or read book Progress of Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies in the United States and Canada written by and published by . This book was released on 1924 with total page 858 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each number contains a List of medievalists and their publications, and a List of doctoral dissertations. Nos. 6-10 include also the report of the academy.

Download or read book Swoon written by Naomi Booth and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Swoon is the first extensive study of literary swooning, homing in on swooning’s rich history as well as its potential to provide new insights into the contemporary. This study demonstrates that passing-out has had a pivotal place in English literature. Beginning with an introduction to the swoon as a marker of aesthetic sensitivity, it includes chapters on swooning and generic transformation in Chaucer and Shakespeare; morbid, femininised swoons and excessive affect in romantic, gothic, and modernist works; irony, cliché and bathos in the swoons of contemporary romance fiction. This book revisits key texts to show that passing-out has been intimately connected to explorations of emotionality, ecstasy and transformation; to depictions of sickness and dying; and to performances of gender and gendering. Swoon offers an exciting new approach the history of the body alongside the history of literary response.

Download or read book Imagining Heaven in the Middle Ages written by Jan S. Emerson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medieval attempts to capture a glimpse of heaven range from the ethereal to the mundane, utilizing media as diverse as maps, cathedrals, songs, treatises, poems, visions and sewer systems. Heaven was at once the goal of the individual Christian life and the end of the cosmic plan. It was, simply stated, perfection. But interpretations varied from the traditional to the dangerously unique as artists and authors, theologians and visionaries struggled to define that perfection. Depending on the source, heaven's attributes vary from height to depth, darkness to light, silence to symphony; the souls within it from activity to passivity, experience to essence, participation to distant admiration. Questions addressed in this anthology include: Are erotic and spiritual love mutually exclusive? Does the soul's happiness depend on the resurrection of the body? What will be the nature of the transfigured body? Will it retain its gender? Will it have senses? Will it know desire? How can desire and fulfillment exist together? Can the human soul ever know God? Contributors to this volume examine well-known and previously unexplored texts and artefacts from historical and art historical, theological, philosophical, and literary perspectives, to complement and challenge more general surveys of the history of heaven, and above all to illuminate the richness and variety of medieval Christian ideas on heaven.

Download or read book Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things written by Robert Bartlett and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-10 with total page 806 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping, authoritative, and entertaining history of the Christian cult of the saints from its origin to the Reformation From its earliest centuries, one of the most notable features of Christianity has been the veneration of the saints—the holy dead. This ambitious history tells the fascinating story of the cult of the saints from its origins in the second-century days of the Christian martyrs to the Protestant Reformation. Robert Bartlett examines all of the most important aspects of the saints—including miracles, relics, pilgrimages, shrines, and the saints' role in the calendar, literature, and art. The book explores the central role played by the bodies and body parts of saints, and the special treatment these relics received. From the routes, dangers, and rewards of pilgrimage, to the saints' impact on everyday life, Bartlett's account is an unmatched examination of an important and intriguing part of the religious life of the past—as well as the present.

Download or read book Friendship in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age written by Albrecht Classen and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-03-29 with total page 813 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although it seems that erotic love generally was the prevailing topic in the medieval world and the Early Modern Age, parallel to this the Ciceronian ideal of friendship also dominated the public discourse, as this collection of essays demonstrates. Following an extensive introduction, the individual contributions explore the functions and the character of friendship from Late Antiquity (Augustine) to the 17th century. They show the spectrum of variety in which this topic appeared ‐ not only in literature, but also in politics and even in painting.

Download or read book The Digby Mary Magdalene Play written by Theresa Coletti and published by Medieval Institute Publications. This book was released on 2018-02-28 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Digby Play of Mary Magdalene is a rare, surviving example of the Middle English saint play. It provides a window on the deep embedding of biblical drama and performance in late medieval devotional practices, social aspiration and critique, and religious discourses. Fully annotated and extensively glossed, this edition adds to the METS Drama series an essential resource for the study of late medieval English religious drama.

Download or read book Medieval Art written by Leslie D. Ross and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1996-11-14 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Designed as a quick-reference source to the topics, symbols, themes, and stories most frequently found in early Christian, western medieval, and Byzantine art, this work describes topics that include names and narratives drawn from the Bible and apocrypha, the lives of saints, and numerous other textual sources. Authors whose works were frequently illustrated or who were influential on the visual arts are treated, as are selected art historical terms and events of significance for the arts. Cross-references alert readers to alternate titles and related topics, and the majority of entries cite a pictorial example. These are keyed to standard texts for easy viewing access. The dictionary begins with Aaron and ends with Zoomorphic Decoration. This dictionary focuses on the medieval period and the distinctive ways in which the subjects and symbols referenced in the work evolved and developed during the Middle Ages, resulting in a unique overview of the evolution, development, popularity, and transformations that took place in medieval artistic iconography. The introduction provides chronological, thematic, and bibliographic surveys to supplement the 500 individual entries; the bibliography directs the readers to more detailed studies. The work also includes names and topics not always found in art reference sources, for example, authors whose works were frequently illustrated, or who were influential on the visual arts, and historical events of significance for the arts.

Download or read book Medieval Drama written by David Bevington and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 2012-06-15 with total page 1105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This reprint (with updated 'Suggestions for Further Reading') of the Houghton Mifflin edition makes David Bevington's classic anthology of medieval drama available again at an affordable price.

Download or read book The Complete Harley 2253 Manuscript Volume 1 written by and published by Medieval Institute Publications. This book was released on 2015-04-01 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: British Library MS Harley 2253 is one of the most important literary works to survive from the English medieval era. In rarity, quality, and abundance, its secular love lyrics comprise an unrivaled collection. Intermingled with them are contemporary political songs as well as delicate lyrics designed to inspire religious devotion.

Download or read book A Cultural History of Tragedy in the Middle Ages written by Jody Enders and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-05-20 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time, a group of distinguished authors come together to provide an authoritative exploration of the cultural history of tragedy in the Middle Ages. Reports of the so-called death of medieval tragedy, they argue, have been greatly exaggerated; and, for the Middle Ages, the stakes couldn't be higher. Eight essays offer a blueprint for future study as they take up the extensive but much-neglected medieval engagement with tragic genres, modes, and performances from the vantage points of gender, politics, theology, history, social theory, anthropology, philosophy, economics, and media studies. The result? A recuperated medieval tragedy that is as much a branch of literature as it is of theology, politics, law, or ethics and which, at long last, rejoins the millennium-long conversation about one of the world's most enduring art forms. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: forms and media; sites of performance and circulation; communities of production and consumption; philosophy and social theory; religion, ritual and myth; politics of city and nation; society and family, and gender and sexuality.

Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Medieval Philosophy and Theology written by Stephen F. Brown and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2007-03-16 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Middle Ages is often viewed as a period of low intellectual achievement. The name itself refers to the time between the high philosophical and literary accomplishments of the Greco-Roman world and the technological advances that were achieved and philosophical and theological alternatives that were formulated in the modern world that followed. However, having produced such great philosophers as Anselm, Peter Abelard, John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Peter Lombard, and the towering Thomas Aquinas, it hardly seems fair to label the medieval period as such. Examining the influence of ancient Greek philosophy as well as of the Arabian and Hebrew scholars who transmitted it, the Historical Dictionary of Medieval Philosophy and Theology presents the philosophy of the Christian West from the 9th to the early 17th century. This is accomplished through a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on the philosophers, concepts, issues, institutions, and events, making this an important reference for the study of the progression of human thought.