The Sea and Medieval English Literature

The Sea and Medieval English Literature PDF Author: Sebastian I. Sobecki
Publisher: DS Brewer
ISBN: 9781843841371
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
A fresh and invigorating survey of the sea as it appears in medieval English literature, from romance to chronicle, hagiography to autobiography. As the first cultural history of the sea in medieval English literature, this book traces premodern myths of insularity from their Old English beginnings to Shakespeare's Tempest. Beginning with a discussion of biblical, classical and pre-Conquest treatments of the sea, it investigates how such works as the Anglo-Norman Voyage of St Brendan, the Tristan romances, the chronicles of Matthew Paris, King Horn, Patience, The Book of Margery Kempe and The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye shape insular ideologies of Englishness. Whether it is Britain's privileged place in the geography of salvation or the political fiction of the idyllic island fortress, medieval English writers' myths of the sea betray their anxieties about their own insular identity; their texts call on maritime motifs to define England geographically and culturally against the presence of the sea. New insights from a range of fields, including jurisprudence, theology, the history of cartography and anthropology, are used to provide fresh readings of a wide range of both insular and continental writings.

The Sea and Medieval English Literature

The Sea and Medieval English Literature PDF Author: Sebastian I. Sobecki
Publisher: DS Brewer
ISBN: 9781843841371
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Get Book

Book Description
A fresh and invigorating survey of the sea as it appears in medieval English literature, from romance to chronicle, hagiography to autobiography. As the first cultural history of the sea in medieval English literature, this book traces premodern myths of insularity from their Old English beginnings to Shakespeare's Tempest. Beginning with a discussion of biblical, classical and pre-Conquest treatments of the sea, it investigates how such works as the Anglo-Norman Voyage of St Brendan, the Tristan romances, the chronicles of Matthew Paris, King Horn, Patience, The Book of Margery Kempe and The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye shape insular ideologies of Englishness. Whether it is Britain's privileged place in the geography of salvation or the political fiction of the idyllic island fortress, medieval English writers' myths of the sea betray their anxieties about their own insular identity; their texts call on maritime motifs to define England geographically and culturally against the presence of the sea. New insights from a range of fields, including jurisprudence, theology, the history of cartography and anthropology, are used to provide fresh readings of a wide range of both insular and continental writings.

The Sea and Englishness in the Middle Ages

The Sea and Englishness in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Sebastian I. Sobecki
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
ISBN: 1843842769
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Focuses on the literary origins of insular identity from local communities to the entire archipelago.

The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature

The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature PDF Author: David Wallace
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521890465
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1060

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Book Description
This is the first full-scale history of medieval English literature for nearly a century. Thirty-three distinguished contributors offer a collaborative account of literature composed or transmitted in England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland between the Norman conquest and the death of Henry VIII in 1547. The volume has five sections: After the Norman Conquest ; Writing in the British Isles ; Institutional Productions ; After the Black Death and Before the Reformation . It provides information on a vast range of literary texts and the conditions of their production and reception, which will serve both specialists and general readers, and also contains a chronology, full bibliography and a detailed index. This book offers the most extensive and vibrant account available of the medieval literatures so drastically reconfigured in Tudor England. It will thus prove essential reading for scholars of the Renaissance as well as medievalists, and for historians as well as literary specialists.

The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Literature 1100-1500

The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Literature 1100-1500 PDF Author: Larry Scanlon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521841674
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
A wide-ranging survey of the most important medieval authors and genres, designed for students of English.

Roles of the Sea in Medieval England

Roles of the Sea in Medieval England PDF Author: Richard Gorski
Publisher: Boydell Press
ISBN: 1843837013
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
A fresh assessment of seaborne activity around England in the later middle ages, offering a fresh perspective on its rich maritime heritage. England's relationship with the sea in the later Middle Ages has been unjustly neglected, a gap which this volume seeks to fill. The physical fact of the kingdom's insularity made the seas around England fundamentally important toits development within the British Isles and in relation to mainland Europe. At times they acted as barriers; but they also, and more often, served as highways of exchange, transport and communication, and it is this aspect whichthe essays collected here emphasise. Mindful that the exploitation of the sea required specialist technology and personnel, and that England's maritime frontiers raised serious issues of jurisdiction, security, and internationaldiplomacy, the chapters explore several key roles performed by the sea during the period c.1200-c.1500. Foremost among them is war: the infrastructure, logistics, politics, and personnel of English seaborne expeditions are assessed, most notably for the period of the Hundred Years War. What emerges from this is a demonstration of the sophisticated, but not infallible, methods of raising and using ships, men and material for war in a period before England possessed a permanent navy. The second major facet of England's relationship with the sea was the generation of wealth: this is addressed in its own right and as an intrinsic aspect of warfare and piracy. RICHARD GORSKIis Philip Nicholas Memorial Lecturer in Maritime History at the University of Hull. Contributors: Richard Gorski, Richard W. Unger, Susan Rose, Craig Lambert, David Simpkin, Tony K. Moore, Marcus Pitcaithly, Tim Bowly, Ian Friel

Landscape in Middle English Romance

Landscape in Middle English Romance PDF Author: Andrew M. Richmond
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108913091
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 542

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Book Description
Our current ecological crises compel us not only to understand how contemporary media shapes our conceptions of human relationships with the environment, but also to examine the historical genealogies of such perspectives. Written during the onset of the Little Ice Age in Britain, Middle English romances provide a fascinating window into the worldviews of popular vernacular literature (and its audiences) at the close of the Middle Ages. Andrew M. Richmond shows how literary conventions of romances shaped and were in turn influenced by contemporary perspectives on the natural world. These popular texts also reveal widespread concern regarding the damaging effects of human actions and climate change. The natural world was a constant presence in the writing, thoughts, and lives of the audiences and authors of medieval English romance – and these close readings reveal that our environmental concerns go back further in our history and culture than we think.

Greenery

Greenery PDF Author: Gillian Rudd
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1847793843
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
Humankind has always been fascinated by the world in which it finds itself, and puzzled by its relations to it. Today that fascination is often expressed in what is now called ‘green’ terms, reflecting concerns about the non-human natural world, puzzlement about how we relate to it, and anxiety about what we, as humans, are doing to it. So called green or eco-criticism acknowledges this concern. Greenery reaches back and offers new readings of English texts, both known and unfamiliar, informed by eco-criticism. After considering general issues pertaining to green criticism, Greenery moves on to a series of individual chapters arranged by theme (earth, trees, wilds, sea, gardens and fields) which provide individual close readings of selections from such familiar texts as Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, Chaucer’s Knight’s and Franklin’s Tales, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Langland’s Piers Plowman. These discussions are contextualized by considering them alongside hitherto marginalized texts such as lyrics, Patience and the romance Sir Orfeo. The result is a study which reinvigorates our customary reading of late Middle English literary texts while also allows us to reflect upon the vibrant new school of eco-criticism itself.

St. Brandan

St. Brandan PDF Author: Thomas Wright
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 76

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Book Description


Uncertain Refuge

Uncertain Refuge PDF Author: Elizabeth Allen
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812298071
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
To seek sanctuary from persecution by entering a sacred space is an act of desperation, but also a symbolic endeavor: fugitives invoke divine presence to reach a precarious safe haven that imbues their lives with religious, social, or political significance. In medieval England, sanctuary was upheld under both canon and common law, and up to five hundred people sought sanctuary every year. What they found, however, was not so much a static refuge as a temporary respite from further action—confession and exile—or from further violence—jurisdictional conflict, harrying or starvation, a breaching of the sanctuary. While sanctuary has usually been analyzed as part of legal history, in Uncertain Refuge Elizabeth Allen explores the symbolic consequences of sanctuary seeking in English literary works—miracle collections, chronicles, romances, and drama. She ponders the miracle of a stag's escape from the hunt into a churchyard as well as the account of a fallen political favorite who gains a sort of charisma as he takes sanctuary three times in succession; the figure of Sir Gawain, seeking refuge in a stark land far from the court and Robin Hood, hiding in his local forest refuge among his Merry Men. Her consideration of medieval sanctuary extends to its resonances in a seventeenth-century play about the early Tudor usurper Perkin Warbeck and even into modern America, with the case of a breach of sanctuary in southwest Georgia in 1963, when sheriffs took over a voter registration meeting in a local church. Uncertain Refuge illuminates a fantasy of protection and its impermanence that animated late medieval literary culture, and one that remains poignantly alive, if no longer written into law, in today's troubled political world.

Money, Commerce, and Economics in Late Medieval English Literature

Money, Commerce, and Economics in Late Medieval English Literature PDF Author: Craig E. Bertolet
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319719009
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
This is the first collection of essays dedicated to the topics of money and economics in the English literature of the late Middle Ages. These essays explore ways that late medieval economic thought informs contemporary English texts and apply modern modes of economic analysis to medieval literature. In so doing, they read the importance and influence of historical records of practices as aids to contextualizing these texts. They also apply recent modes of economic history as a means to understand the questions the texts ask about economics, trade, and money. Collectively, these papers argue that both medieval and modern economic thought are key to valuable historical contextualization of medieval literary texts, but that this criticism can be advanced only if we also recognize the specificity of the economic and social conditions of late-medieval England.