front cover of Waldef
Waldef
A French Romance from Medieval England
Ivana Djordjević
Arc Humanities Press, 2020
This first English translation of Le Roman de Waldef makes a significant representative of the French literature of medieval England accessible for the first time. Its wide-ranging content provides an ideal introduction to a number of themes in medieval literature, making it suitable for a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses. The fast-moving romance plot of this early thirteenth-century tale recounts the ancestry and exploits of Waldef and his two sons, set against a history of pre-Conquest England. The narrative shares themes and incident types with other important insular romances, including the Lai of Haveloc, Boeve de Haumtone, and Gui de Warewic. Waldef’s scope, interest in battle, and political stratagems bear reading alongside medieval chronicles, while secret love affairs connect it with other romance literature of the period, and adventures across a wide area of the known world provide affinities with medieval travel narrative.
[more]

front cover of War and Collective Identities in the Middle Ages
War and Collective Identities in the Middle Ages
East, West, and Beyond
Yannis Stouraitis
Arc Humanities Press, 2023
This book uses sociological perspectives to bring together work on war and identity in the Middle Ages relating to a range of peoples and geographical settings from Europe, the eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Asia. Focusing on the interrelation between ideological practices and group formation, it examines the role of warfare in the emergence and decline of particular social structures, and changing patterns of collective identification. It contributes to the debate on the longue durée development of the phenomena of ethnicity and nationhood by drawing attention to the impact of war on the evolution of various types of polity and visions of community in the Middle Ages. Its use of non-European as well as European exemplars provides a wealth of fruitful comparative material, shedding new light on the relationship between medieval warfare and high-level identities.
[more]

front cover of Why Study the Middle Ages?
Why Study the Middle Ages?
Kisha G. Tracy
Arc Humanities Press, 2022
The study of the Middle Ages in every aspect of the modern liberal arts—the humanities, STEM, and the social sciences—has significant importance for society and the individual. There is a common belief that the peoples of the past were somehow exempt from (positive, especially) human nature, had less of a sense of morality (by any definition) than we do now, or were unaware of basic human dilemmas or triumphs. Relegating the Middle Ages to "primitive" distances us from close examination of what has not changed in society—or what has, which might not be for the better. Exploring and exploding these (mis)conceptions is essential to experience the benefits of a liberal education.
[more]

front cover of Women and Economic Power in Premodern Royal Courts
Women and Economic Power in Premodern Royal Courts
Cathleen Sarti
Arc Humanities Press, 2020
Premodern kings and queens had splendid courts to show their God-given power. But where did the money for these come from? Following the money trail back often leads to unexpectedly savvy women who knew how to deal with money, and how to manage huge estates, treasuries, or accounts. This volume focuses on the economic and financial dimensions of the premodern royal court, and especially on the women using money as an instrument of power. Methodological and theoretical reflections on an economic history of royal courts frame case studies from medieval England to early modern Denmark and the Holy Roman Empire. Empresses and queens, but also mistresses and favourites are discussed, including considerations of their spheres of influence, their financial strategies and means, and their successes and failures.
[more]

front cover of Women Religious Crossing between Cloister and the World
Women Religious Crossing between Cloister and the World
Nunneries in Europe and the Americas, ca. 1200–1700
Mercedes Pérez Vidal
Arc Humanities Press, 2023
This book presents a comparative approach to the role of women in religious and monastic life in Europe and the Americas during the medieval and early modern periods. The contributors inquire into differences and similarities, continuities and discontinuities of women’s agency inside and outside the convent. The volume challenges traditional chronological and regional limitations such as those between the Middle Ages and the Modern era and stresses the transatlantic exchange of models between Europe and the Americas.
[more]

front cover of Worship in Medieval England
Worship in Medieval England
Matthew Cheung Salisbury
Arc Humanities Press, 2018
<div>The study of medieval liturgy can tell us a great deal not only about the worship of the church, but also about the people who practised it. However, existing scholarship can be problematic and difficult to use.</div><div>This short book aims to unsettle the notion that liturgiology is a mysterious, abstruse, and monolithic discipline. It challenges some scholarly orthodoxies, hints at the complexity of the liturgy and shows that it needs to be examined in new and different ways.</div>
[more]

front cover of Writing about the Merovingians in the Early United States
Writing about the Merovingians in the Early United States
Gregory I. Halfond
Arc Humanities Press, 2023
In a young American republic seeking to define itself in relation to European cultural and political models past and present, it was assumed that the history of Europe’s peoples could be tracked across time over the longue durée. From this perspective, even the barbarous long-haired kings of the distant Merovingian era helped to define the political and cultural identity of a France—and, indeed, a Europe—whose actions Americans recognized as relevant to their own republic. Americans saw medieval parallels not only in the actions of successive French regimes, but in contemporary transatlantic issues of anxiety, including the adjudication of claims of political legitimacy and the debate over the perpetuation of racial slavery. That early American writers located their own meanings in the history of Merovingian Francia is indicative of a less linear, and more diverse and transnational, historiography than previously recognized.
[more]

front cover of Writing Old Age and Impairments in Late Medieval England
Writing Old Age and Impairments in Late Medieval England
Will Rogers
Arc Humanities Press, 2021
The old speaker in Middle English literature often claims to be impaired because of age. This admission is often followed by narratives that directly contradict it, as speakers, such as the Reeve in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales or Amans in Gower's Confessio Amantis, proceed to perform even as they claim debility. More than the modesty topos, this contradiction exists, the book argues, as prosthesis: old age brings with it debility, but discussing age-related impairments augments the old, impaired body, while simultaneously undercutting and emphasizing bodily impairments. This language of prosthesis becomes a metaphor for the works these speakers use to fashion narrative, which exist as incomplete yet powerful sources.
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter