Magic And The Supernatural In Medieval English Romance
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Magic and the Supernatural in Medieval English Romance by Corinne J. Saunders Pdf
"This study looks at a wide range of medieval Englisih romance texts, including the works of Chaucer and Malory, from a broad cultural perspective, to show that while they employ magic in order to create exotic, escapist worlds, they are also grounded in a sense of possibility, and reflect a complex web of inherited and current ideas." --Book Jacket.
This book examines the roles of magic in medieval romance. Magic's crucial function in the romances may be established by studying the diverse works of Chrétien de Troyes, the Lais of Marie de France, the romances of Sir Tristrem, Syr Launfal, Ywain & Gawain and Chaucer's The Franklin's Tale. Romance authors used magical trials to explore a character' moral status and position on issues important to the community, such as when to maintain loyalty to a king or to a lover. Romance authors were able to encourage the exploration of human motivation by using magic to create, or expose a character' morally ambiguous situation. This technique enabled a broader discussion of social issues than would have been allowed in situations constrained by the boundaries of Christian dogmatism. In order to understand the function of magic in medieval romance, it is necessary to appreciate its function in the medieval world. Magic is coupled to some of the most important works of the medieval age, such as the theological texts of Augustine and Aquinas, the histories of Geoffrey of Monmouth and Wace, as well playing a significant role in medicine and the nascent studies of science. Romance writers capitalised upon the associations between magic and these fields of study to create a more serious framework for their texts. The romances could then operate beyond the level of simple entertainment and provide the interested audience with social commentary, moral analysis and material for thought on a wide variety of issues.
Christianity and Romance in Medieval England by Rosalind Field,Phillipa Hardman,Michelle Sweeney Pdf
The essays collected here show how the romances of medieval England engaged with contemporary Christian culture, and demonstrate the importance of reading them with an awareness of that culture.
Love Magic and Control in Premodern Iberian Literature by Veronica Menaldi Pdf
This book explores the complexity of Iberian identity and multicultural/multi-religious interactions in the Peninsula through the lens of spells, talismans, and imaginative fiction in medieval and early modern Iberia. Focusing particularly on love magic—which manipulates objects, celestial spheres, and demonic conjurings to facilitate sexual encounters—Menaldi examines how practitioners and victims of such magic as represented in major works produced in Castile. Magic, and love magic in particular, is an exchange of knowledge, a claim to power and a deviation from or subversion of the licit practices permitted by authoritative decrees. As such, magic serves as a metaphorical tool for understanding the complex relationships of the Christian with the non-Christian. In seeking to understand and incorporate hidden secrets that presumably reveal how one can manipulate their environment, occult knowledge became one of the funnels through which cultures and practices mixed and adapted throughout the centuries.
This multidisciplinary volume illustrates how representations of magic in fourteenth-century romances link the supernatural, spectacle, and morality in distinctive ways. Supernatural marvels represented in vivid visual detail are foundational to the characteristic Middle English genres of romance and hagiography. In Middle English Marvels, Tara Williams explores the didactic and affective potential of secular representations of magic and shows how fourteenth-century English writers tested the limits of that potential. Drawing on works by Augustine, Gervase of Tilbury, Chaucer, and the anonymous poets of Sir Orfeo and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, among others, Williams examines how such marvels might convey moral messages within and beyond the narrative. She analyzes examples from both highly canonical and more esoteric texts and examines marvels that involve magic and transformation, invoke visual spectacle, and invite moral reflection on how one should relate to others. Within this shared framework, Williams finds distinct concerns—chivalry, identity, agency, and language—that intersect with the marvelous in significant ways. Integrating literary and historical approaches to the study of magic, this volume convincingly shows how certain fourteenth-century texts eschewed the predominant trends and developed a new theory of the marvelous. Williams’s engaging, erudite study will be of special interest to scholars of the occult, the medieval and early modern eras, and literature.
The Routledge History of Medieval Magic by Sophie Page,Catherine Rider Pdf
The Routledge History of Medieval Magic brings together the work of scholars from across Europe and North America to provide extensive insights into recent developments in the study of medieval magic between c.1100 and c.1500. This book covers a wide range of topics, including the magical texts which circulated in medieval Europe, the attitudes of intellectuals and churchmen to magic, the ways in which magic intersected with other aspects of medieval culture, and the early witch trials of the fifteenth century. In doing so, it offers the reader a detailed look at the impact that magic had within medieval society, such as its relationship to gender roles, natural philosophy, and courtly culture. This is furthered by the book’s interdisciplinary approach, containing chapters dedicated to archaeology, literature, music, and visual culture, as well as texts and manuscripts. The Routledge History of Medieval Magic also outlines how research on this subject could develop in the future, highlighting under-explored subjects, unpublished sources, and new approaches to the topic. It is the ideal book for both established scholars and students of medieval magic.
Medieval English Literature by Beatrice Fannon Pdf
This volume brings together a wide range of original, scholarly essays on key figures and topics in medieval literature by leading academics. The volume examines the major authors such as Chaucer, Langland and the Gawain Poet, and covers key topics in medieval literature, including gender, class, courtly and popular culture, and religion. The volume seeks to provide a fresh and stimulating guide to medieval literature.
A new analysis of the neglected genre of medieval Biblical poetry.Medieval England had a thriving culture of rewriting the Bible in art, drama, and literature in Latin, French and English. Middle English biblical poetry was central to this culture, and although these poems have suffered from critical neglect, sometimes dismissed as mere "paraphrase", they are rich, innovative and politically engaged. Read in the same gentry and noble households as secular romance, biblical poems borrow and adapt romance plots and motifs, present romance-inflected exotic settings, and share similar concerns: reputation, order, family and marriage. This book explores six poems from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that retell episodes from the Old Testament: the ballad-like Iacob and Iosep, two lives of Adam and Eve; an alliterative version of the Susanna story, the Pistel of Susan; and the Gawain-poet's Patience and Cleanness. Each chapter identifies new sources and influences for the poems, including from biblical glosses and manuscript illustration. The book also investigates the poems' relationships with contemporary cultures of literature and religion, including with secular romance, and offers new readings of each poem and its cultural functions, showing how they bridge the chasm between medieval Christian England and the Jews and pagans of the pre-Christian Mediterranean world. It also considers reading contexts, arguing that the poems and their manuscripts offer hints about the social class and gender of their household audiences.sses and manuscript illustration. The book also investigates the poems' relationships with contemporary cultures of literature and religion, including with secular romance, and offers new readings of each poem and its cultural functions, showing how they bridge the chasm between medieval Christian England and the Jews and pagans of the pre-Christian Mediterranean world. It also considers reading contexts, arguing that the poems and their manuscripts offer hints about the social class and gender of their household audiences.sses and manuscript illustration. The book also investigates the poems' relationships with contemporary cultures of literature and religion, including with secular romance, and offers new readings of each poem and its cultural functions, showing how they bridge the chasm between medieval Christian England and the Jews and pagans of the pre-Christian Mediterranean world. It also considers reading contexts, arguing that the poems and their manuscripts offer hints about the social class and gender of their household audiences.sses and manuscript illustration. The book also investigates the poems' relationships with contemporary cultures of literature and religion, including with secular romance, and offers new readings of each poem and its cultural functions, showing how they bridge the chasm between medieval Christian England and the Jews and pagans of the pre-Christian Mediterranean world. It also considers reading contexts, arguing that the poems and their manuscripts offer hints about the social class and gender of their household audiences.nder of their household audiences.
A concise history of the goddess-like figures who evade both Christian and pagan traditions, from the medieval period to the present day In this riveting account, renowned scholar Ronald Hutton explores the history of deity-like figures in Christian Europe. Drawing on anthropology, archaeology, literature, and history, Hutton shows how hags, witches, the Fairy Queen, and the Green Man all came to be, and how they changed over the centuries. Looking closely at four main figures--Mother Earth, the Fairy Queen, the Mistress of the Night, and the Old Woman of Gaelic tradition--Hutton challenges decades of debate around the female figures who have long been thought versions of pre-Christian goddesses. He makes the compelling case that these goddess figures found in the European imagination did not descend from the pre-Christian ancient world, yet have nothing Christian about them. It was in fact nineteenth-century scholars who attempted to establish the narrative of pagan survival that persists today.