Download or read book Approaches to Teaching the Song of Roland written by William W. Kibler and published by Approaches to Teaching World L. This book was released on 2006 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each book contains a CD featuring performances of the Song of Roland. The Song of Roland is a well-known hallmark of medieval French literature, yet students often read only excerpts and receive general introductions to the poem and its context. The challenges of teaching Roland include its age and subject matter, its form and composition in Old French, and its representation of Christians and Muslims. This volume in the MLA series Approaches to Teaching World Literature aims to help nonspecialist instructors teach Roland more comprehensively and to offer seasoned medievalists ways to invigorate their pedagogical tactics. Part 1, "Materials," surveys available editions, a wide range of secondary studies devoted to the poem, and electronic aids to teaching. Essays in part 2, "Approaches," elaborate on the poem's contexts, avatars, language techniques, and characters and episodes; describe the diverse classroom strategies that experienced instructors have implemented; and review the voluminous critical canon about the poem. The musical quality of the Song of Roland is vital for students to grasp. A compact disc accompanying the volume showcases reconstructions of sung performances of the Song of Roland in Old French. The examples offered here illuminate the rich quality of Roland's archaic language and demonstrate a few efforts to recover its lost music. Paired with performances of Roland are melodies used as models for singing the poem.
Download or read book Three Preludes to the Song of Roland written by and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2023-07-18 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first English translation of three chansons de geste inspired by the Romance epic, the Song of Roland. The success of the eleventh-century Song of Roland gave rise to a series of around twenty related chansons de geste, known collectively as the Cycle of the King. In addition to reworkings of the Song of Roland in Old French and other medieval languages, these poems are devoted to the numerous military campaigns of Charlemagne against the Muslims before and after the tragic Battle of Roncevaux. These texts provide valuable insights into the medieval reception of the Roland material, exemplifying the process of cycle formation and attesting to the diversity of the Romance epic. Far from presenting a simplistic view of the clash of civilizations, these chansons de geste display a web of contradictions, offering both a glorification and a critique of hatred and violence. This volume offers the first English translations of the three epic poems whose action directly precedes the events of the Song of Roland. Gui of Burgundy extends the period of time spent in Spain by Charles and his army from seven to twenty-six years, which gives the sons of the Twelve Peers the opportunity to reach adulthood and come to the rescue of their fathers. Roland at Saragossa, composed in Occitan, takes place in the days immediately preceding the decisive defeat and relates in an heroi-comic manner how Roland sneaks into Saragossa at the request of the pagan Queen Braslimonda, who has been enraptured by his strength and beauty. Finally, Otinel tells of a Saracen envoy who comes to Paris to challenge Charlemagne on behalf of the Emir Garsile, who has his capital in Lombardy. The action takes place in France and northern Italy in a lull between the capture of Pamplona and the defeat at Roncevaux. The translations are presented with notes, and the volume includes an introduction placing the poems in their wider historical and cultural contexts.
Download or read book Teaching World Epics written by Jo Ann Cavallo and published by Modern Language Association. This book was released on 2023-07-27 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cultures across the globe have embraced epics: stories of memorable deeds by heroic characters whose actions have significant consequences for their lives and their communities. Incorporating narrative elements also found in sacred history, chronicle, saga, legend, romance, myth, folklore, and the novel, epics throughout history have both animated the imagination and encouraged reflection on what it means to be human. Teaching World Epics addresses ancient and more recent epic works from Africa, Europe, Mesoamerica, and East, Central, and South Asia that are available in English translations. Useful to instructors of literature, peace and conflict studies, transnational studies, women's studies, and religious studies, the essays in this volume focus on epics in sociopolitical and cultural contexts, on the adaptation and reception of epic works, and on themes that are especially relevant today, such as gender dynamics and politics, national identity, colonialism and imperialism, violence, and war. This volume includes discussion of Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Giulia Bigolina's Urania, The Book of Dede Korkut, Luís Vaz de Camões's Os Lusíadas, David of Sassoun, The Epic of Askia Mohammed, The Epic of Gilgamesh, the epic of Sun-Jata, Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga's La Araucana, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Kalevala, Kebra Nagast, Kudrun, The Legend of Poṉṉivaḷa Nadu, the Mahabharata, Manas, John Milton's Paradise Lost, Mwindo, the Nibelungenlied, Poema de mio Cid, Popol Wuj, the Ramayana, the Shahnameh, Sirat Bani Hilal, Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Statius's Thebaid, The Tale of the Heike, Three Kingdoms, Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá's Historia de la Nueva México, and Virgil's Aeneid.
Download or read book Approaches to Teaching Tolkien s The Lord of the Rings and Other Works written by Leslie A. Donovan and published by Modern Language Association. This book was released on 2015-10-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A philologist and medieval scholar, J. R. R. Tolkien never intended to write immensely popular literature that would challenge traditional ideas about the nature of great literature and that was worthy of study in colleges across the world. He set out only to write a good story, the kind of story he and his friends would enjoy reading. In The Hobbit and in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien created an entire world informed by his vast knowledge of mythology, languages, and medieval literature. In the 1960s, his books unexpectedly gained cult status with a new generation of young, countercultural readers. Today, the readership for Tolkien's absorbing secondary world--filled with monsters, magic, adventure, sacrifice, and heroism--continues to grow. Part 1 of this volume, "Materials," introduces instructors to the rich array of resources available for teaching Tolkien, including editions and criticism of his fiction and scholarship, historical material on his life and times, audiovisual materials, and film adaptations of his fiction. The essays in part 2, "Approaches," help instructors introduce students to critical debates around Tolkien's work, its sources, its influence, and its connection to ecology, religion, and science. Contributors draw on interdisciplinary approaches to outline strategies for teaching Tolkien in a wide variety of classroom contexts.
Download or read book Shaping Identity in Medieval French Literature written by Adrian P. Tudor and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2019-08-05 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection considers the multiplicity and instability of medieval French literary identity, arguing that it is fluid and represented in numerous ways. The works analyzed span genres—epic, romance, lyric poetry, hagiography, fabliaux—and historical periods from the twelfth century to the late Middle Ages. Contributors examine the complexity of the notion of self through a wide range of lenses, from marginal characters to gender to questions of voice and naming. Studying a variety of texts—including Conte du Graal, Roman de la Rose, Huon de Bordeaux, and the Oxford Roland—they conceptualize the Other Within as an individual who simultaneously exists within a group while remaining foreign to it. They explore the complex interactions between and among individuals and groups, and demonstrate how identity can be imposed and self-imposed not only by characters but by authors and audiences. Taken together, these essays highlight the fluidity and complexity of identity in medieval French texts, and underscore both the richness of the literature and its engagement with questions that are at once more and less modern than they initially appear. Contributors: Adrian P. Tudor | Kristin L. Burr | William Burgwinkle | Jane Gilbert | Francis Gingras | Sara I. James | Douglas Kelly | Mary Jane Schenck | James R. Simpson | Jane H.M. Taylor
Download or read book Approaches to Teaching the Romance of the Rose written by Daisy Delogu and published by Modern Language Association. This book was released on 2023-03-21 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most influential texts of its time, the Romance of the Rose offers readers a window into the world view of the late Middle Ages in Europe, including notions of moral philosophy and courtly love. Yet the Rose also explores topics that remain relevant to readers today, such as gender, desire, and the power of speech. Students, however, can find the work challenging because of its dual authorship by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, its structure as an allegorical dream vision, and its encyclopedic length and scope. The essays in this volume offer strategies for teaching the poem with confidence and enjoyment. Part 1, "Materials," suggests helpful background resources. Part 2, "Approaches," presents contexts, critical approaches, and strategies for teaching the work and its classical and medieval sources, illustrations, and adaptations as well as the intellectual debates that surrounded it.
Download or read book Teaching the Italian Renaissance Romance Epic written by Jo Ann Cavallo and published by Modern Language Association. This book was released on 2018-12-01 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Italian romance epic of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with its multitude of characters, complex plots, and roots in medieval Carolingian epic and Arthurian chivalric romance, was a form popular with courtly and urban audiences. In the hands of writers such as Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso, works of remarkable sophistication that combined high seriousness and low comedy were created. Their works went on to influence Cervantes, Milton, Ronsard, Shakespeare, and Spenser. In this volume instructors will find ideas for teaching the Italian Renaissance romance epic along with its adaptations in film, theater, visual art, and music. An extensive resources section locates primary texts online and lists critical studies, anthologies, and reference works.
Download or read book The Roland and Otuel Romances and the Anglo Norman Otinel written by Susanna Fein and published by Medieval Institute Publications. This book was released on 2020-09-30 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edition contains four Middle English Charlemagne romances from the Otuel cycle: Roland and Vernagu, Otuel a Knight, Otuel and Roland, and Duke Roland and Sir Otuel of Spain. A translation of the romances' source, the Anglo-French Otinel, is also included. The romances center on conflicts between Frankish Christians and various Saracen groups, and deal with issues of racial and religious difference, conversion, and faith-based violence.
Download or read book The Hero s Mortal Walls written by William F. Woods and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2024-01-02 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The heroes of early narrative are the faces of an older world. In constant retellings, their stories hold the memory like members of an extended family. Gilgamesh, Odysseus, Beowulf, Gawain, Roland, Yvain, Genji--in their colorful, often exaggerated ways, they show how the people of their own time and place liked to know themselves. The heroes embody their identity and reflect their culture. Because their world was difficult and dangerous, every hero needed defensive strengths. This book analyzes seven iconic heroes and compares each champion to a walled town or castle, hardened against an outer threat. These defenses are the mortal walls of their identity--their strengths against the world, as well as their dealings within it--and are exemplified in their actions as warriors, distinct rhetoric, complex relationships with women, and devotion to the divine. By delving into some of early narrative's most renowned heroes, the book reveals the pieces of their inner selves that even they cannot keep outside the walls but must finally accept with firm humility.
Download or read book Bestsellers and masterpieces written by Heather Blurton and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-16 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bestsellers and masterpieces: The changing medieval canon addresses the strange fact that, in both European and Middle Eastern medieval studies, those texts that we now study and teach as the most canonical representations of their era were in fact not popular or even widely read in their day. On the other hand, those texts that were popular, as evidenced by the extant manuscript record, are taught and studied with far less frequency. The book provides cross-cultural insight into both the literary tastes of the medieval period and the literary and political forces behind the creation of the ‘modern canon’ of medieval literature.
Download or read book Moult a sans et vallour written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William W. Kibler is one of the most productive and versatile medievalists of his generation. Some scholars and students think of him primarily as a specialist in the medieval epic, whereas others consider him to be an Arthurian scholar. He is of course both, but he is also much more: a consummate philologist and editor of texts and also a prolific and accomplished translator. Above all, those who know him best know him as an extraordinarily generous and modest man. The present volume represents an effort by thirty medievalists, specialists in fields as diverse as William Kibler’s interests, to indicate our respect for him, aptly described in the foreword as “scholar, teacher, friend.”
Download or read book Anglo Saxon England Volume 36 written by Malcolm Godden and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-03-06 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anglo-Saxon England is the only publication which consistently embraces all the main aspects of study of Anglo-Saxon history and culture - linguistic, literary, textual, palaeographic, religious, intellectual, historical, archaeological and artistic - and which promotes the more unusual interests - in music or medicine or education, for example. Articles in volume 36 include: The tabernacula of Gregory the Great and the conversion of Anglo-Saxon England by Flora Spiegel; The career of Aldhelm by Michael Lapidge; The name 'Merovingian' and the dating of Beowulf by Walter Goffart; An abbot, an archbishop and the Viking raids of 1006-7 and 1009-12 by Simon Keynes; and Demonstrative behaviour and political communication in later Anglo-Saxon England by Julia Barrow.
Download or read book Medieval Translations and Cultural Discourse written by Sif Rikhardsdottir and published by DS Brewer. This book was released on 2012 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of what the translation of medieval French texts into different European languages can reveal about the differences between cultures.
Download or read book The Legend of Charlemagne in the Middle Ages written by M. Gabriele and published by Springer. This book was released on 2008-09-29 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These essays take advantage of a new, exciting trend towards interdisciplinary research on the Charlemagne legend. Written by historians, art historians, and literary scholars, these essays focus on the multifaceted ways the Charlemagne legend functioned in the Middle Ages and how central the shared (if nonetheless fictional) memory of the great Frankish ruler was to the medieval West. A gateway to new research on memory, crusading, apocalyptic expectation, Carolingian historiography, and medieval kingship, the contributors demonstrate the fuzzy line separating "fact" and "fiction" in the Middle Ages.
Download or read book Laughter in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times written by Albrecht Classen and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2010-09-22 with total page 864 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite popular opinions of the ‘dark Middle Ages’ and a ‘gloomy early modern age,’ many people laughed, smiled, giggled, chuckled, entertained and ridiculed each other. This volume demonstrates how important laughter had been at times and how diverse the situations proved to be in which people laughed, and this from late antiquity to the eighteenth century. The contributions examine a wide gamut of significant cases of laughter in literary texts, historical documents, and art works where laughter determined the relationship among people. In fact, laughter emerges as a kaleidoscopic phenomenon reflecting divine joy, bitter hatred and contempt, satirical perspectives and parodic intentions. In some examples protagonists laughed out of sheer happiness and delight, in others because they felt anxiety and insecurity. It is much more difficult to detect premodern sculptures of laughing figures, but they also existed. Laughter reflected a variety of concerns, interests, and intentions, and the collective approach in this volume to laughter in the past opens many new windows to the history of mentality, social and religious conditions, gender relationships, and power structures.
Download or read book Christian Muslim Relations A Bibliographical History Volume 3 1050 1200 written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-03-21 with total page 818 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christian-Muslim Relations, a Bibliographical History 3 (CMR3) is a history of all the works on Christian-Muslim relations from 1050 to 1200. It comprises introductory essays and over one hundred entries containing descriptions, assessments and comprehensive bibliographical details of individual works.
Download or read book The Poetics of Speech in the Medieval Spanish Epic written by Matthew Bailey and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Matthew Bailey's work on medieval Hispanic epic poetry is most impressive. It is a unique contribution to our knowledge of the Old Spanish epic and offers a highly original advance in its field. This book will, of course, primarily be of interest to Hispano-Medievalists, but given its enlightened and far-reaching views - based on very wide reading - it will also be of significant interest to all medievalists and folklorists, regardless-of specialty'-Samuel Armistead, Department of Spanish, University of California, Davis The Poetics of Speech in the Medieval Spanish Epic explores the composition of manuscript texts in thirteenth-century Spain. Of the vernacular epic poems originating with the minstrels of this era, only three full-length works remain: Cantar de Mio Cid, Poema de Fernßn Gonzßlez, and Mocedades de Rodrigo, all preserved and recorded by members of the clergy. By analysing expressive traits found in these three poems, Matthew Bailey links them to the cognitive processes that take place in the minds of speakers as narration unfolds. In Latin and other vernacular texts from the same period, authors identify their sources as oral, describe oral compositional techniques, and detail modes of processing texts in medieval monastic environments. Using the information provided by these details, as well as a close technical reading of the three epic poems, Bailey incorporates the methodologies and concepts of discourse analysis in an examination of expression in the Spanish epic and points convincingly to oral composition as the initial step in text creation for the period.