Like every discipline, Rhetorical Studies relies on a technical vocabulary to convey specialized concepts, but few disciplines rely so deeply on a set of terms developed so long ago. Pathos, kairos, doxa, topos-these and others originate from the so-called classical world, which has conferred on them excessive authority. Without jettisoning these ......
Includes Old French text and English translation of the life of Saint Eufrosine, who dressed as a man to become a monk in a monastery. Mixing hagiography, romance, epic, and theology, this work from around 1200 CE raises questions about sexuality and identity, family relationships, and spiritual and secular values.
Dante's Divine Comedy can compel and shock readers: it combines intense emotion and psychological insight with medieval theology and philosophy. This volume will help instructors lead their students through the many dimensions - historical, literary, religious, and ethical - that make the work so rewarding and enduringly relevant yet so difficult. ......
Ancient and medieval labyrinths embody paradox, according to Penelope Reed Doob. Their structure allows a double perspective-the baffling, fragmented prospect confronting the maze-treader within, and the comprehensive vision available to those without. Mazes simultaneously assert order and chaos, artistry and confusion, articulated clarity and ......
The Italian romance epic of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with its multitude of characters, complex plots, and roots in medieval Carolingian and Arthurian chivalric romances, 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 ......
A series of dream visions, Piers Plowman is a moral reckoning of the whole of medieval England, in which every part of society--from church and king to every sort of ""folk""--is considered in the light of the narrator's interpretation of Christian revelation. The Middle English poem, rich and beautiful, is a particular challenge to teach: it ......
A prolific poet and a protofeminist, Christine de Pizan worked within a sophisticated late medieval court culture and formed an identity as an authority on her society's preoccupations with religion, politics, and morality. Her works address various aspects of misogyny, the appropriate actions of rulers, and the ethical framework for social ......
The moving, richly allegorical poem Pearl was written in Middle English by the anonymous author who likely also penned Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In it, a man in a garden, grieving the loss of a beloved pearl, dreams of the Pearl-Maiden, who appears across a stream. She teaches him the nature of innocence, God's grace, meekness, and purity. ......
Winner, PROSE Award, Classics, Association of American Publishers (AAP), 2018 Writing down the epic tales of the Trojan War and the wanderings of Odysseus in texts that became the Iliad and the Odyssey was a defining moment in the intellectual history of the West, a moment from which many current conventions and attitudes toward books can be ......
