Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/cjm.2023.a912687
Robyn McAuliffe
Reviewed by: The Chastity Plot by Lisabeth During Robyn McAuliffe Lisabeth During, The Chastity Plot (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021), 391 pp. The title of this book draws attention to a device or, as During reveals, a preoccupation of the media we consume. The “chastity plot” forms central narratives in contemporary books, films, and television shows (for example, Jane the Virgin and the American Pie franchise). The sociologist Laura Carpenter has written extensively on the stigmatization of virginity and virginity-loss within the United States in particular. Lisabeth During’s The Chastity Plot, however, is a much-needed and important new addition to the conversation surrounding chastity, covering a multitude of literary and cross-cultural traditions to identify and explicate the cultural preoccupation with chastity and virginity that has endured since antiquity. Drawing on examples from many literary genres, During uses each chapter to chart the glorification and downfall of the chastity ideal. She begins first with a brief introduction to the concept of chastity, its prevalence within contemporary evangelical and conservative Christian teachings, and its links with morality, before moving in chapter 1 to an elucidation of the differences between “the eunuch’s plot” favored by Church writings, specifically within saints’ lives, and “[c]hastity plots,” which “stage a struggle against the social insistence on marriage and reproduction” (30). From her analysis of the female saint Thecla, [End Page 223] known for her chastity and allegiance to the teachings of St. Paul, and the eighteenth-century advocate of chastity, Pamela, from Richardson’s Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded, During moves on to an analysis in chapter 2 of the tragic hero Hippolytus, whose devout allegiance to the chaste state in Euripides’s classical Greek tragedy Hippolytus ends in turmoil. This is a particularly effective chapter for its exploration of male chastity, its links with misogyny within the play, and the dangers of an unchecked and uncontrolled male chastity. Chapter 3 focuses on the “antimarriage plot” and the issue of reconciling chastity with marriage (87). During’s analysis focuses predominantly on female characters who resent prescriptive marriage and seek a life of asexual independence; specifically, she looks to those in Aeschylus’s The Suppliants, the myth of the misandrist Chinese princess Turandot in various literary forms, including Gozzi’s Turandot, before turning to the twentieth-century antimarriage narrative of The Philadelphia Story. Chapters 4 and 5 take a more religious turn, focusing on the “radical sexual renunciation” of Christianity and the difficulty of aligning chastity with conjugality (132). Both chapters focus on the ascetic’s desire to return to a prelapsarian condition of sexual innocence, a sentiment that flavors many ecclesiastical diatribes advocating the spiritual benefits of virginity. Chapters 6 and 7 explore both the early mo
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/cjm.2023.a912677
Arpit Gaind
Reviewed by: Chaucer and the Ethics of Time by Gillian Adler Arpit Gaind Gillian Adler, Chaucer and the Ethics of Time (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2022), x + 230 pp. In Chaucer and the Ethics of Time, Gillian Adler examines temporality and structures of time in the works of fourteenth-century English poet Geoffrey Chaucer. Adler picks five of Chaucer’s seminal works, organized as five separate chapters with an introduction and a conclusion, addressing themes of morality, aesthetics, and epistemological structures in order to show the “temporal ethics” (2) of time in Chaucer’s poetry. Chaucer and the Ethics of Time demonstrates the ways in which Chaucer argued for ideas of subjectivity, free will, and chance that govern human individuality. Drawing from Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy and Augustine’s Confessions, Adler examines how time is experienced and the role of “intentionality” in understanding the past and its relevance to the present. According to Adler, the active transformation of the “now” and shaping how memory is structured govern Chaucer’s project of human ethics (7). Adler also explores Chaucer’s reworking of the moral and social discourses on temporality in the Middle Ages, where wasting time was considered a “sin of acedia.” In “The Process of Time in the Parliament of Fowls,” Adler starts with the writings of Shakespeare while giving a vivid description of the medieval notion of wasting time as a sin and expressing time as a virtue (124). However, Adler shows how Chaucer, in his works, departs from such a binary of sins and vices and points toward a more complex relationship that temporality shares with human subjectivity. The author points out the use of subversion in Chaucer as a way to move toward ambiguity showing temporal discourses as neither “productive” nor objectively accurate. Adler draws upon Chaucer’s work on poetic form and its impact on temporality by distinguishing between “story” and “narrative.” The former, for Chaucer, is a depiction of events, and the latter is about the structure of those events and the retelling of the story. For Adler, the dichotomy of story and narrative in Chaucer’s work is of great significance, as it shows the representational practices of language and literature during the Middle Ages; the poet created both “tales on time” and “tales about time” (17). Another theme of significance in Chaucer and the Ethics of Time is the question of “anachronism.” Adler argues that Chaucer’s works counterpose the wholeness and singularity of time and reasons for the ruptures and “fragmentations” that emerge in the human experience of time (39). For instance, in “Seeing Time and the Illusion of Control in Troilus and Criseyde,” Adler draws upon Chaucer’s Translation of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy in Troilus and Criseyde. Adler demonstrates well how Chaucer constructs time and its impact on the Thebes-Trojan “historical continuum,” as well as what the city of London as a fantasy mea
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/cjm.2023.a912683
Sally Elizabeth Tozer
Reviewed by: Medieval Manuscripts and Literary Forms by Jessica Brantley Sally Elizabeth Tozer Jessica Brantley, Medieval Manuscripts and Literary Forms (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022), xiv + 346 pp., 25 ills. In Medieval English Manuscripts and Literary Forms, Jessica Brantley impresses upon fledgling medievalists the importance of understanding the distinctions between encountering modern print books and encountering medieval ones. She questions what it means to physically navigate a digital edition, versus a print edition, versus the manuscript artifact in its extant form, which is to consider not only the past life of the codex as a material artifact but also its future transmission in the form of a digital facsimile. Considered as such, the life of the manuscript book is a circular one. Finding its genesis in the technological advancements that precipitated the codex form, the manuscript book presages the organizations of language and data found in the modern print book, and, in turn, how digital “books”—laptops, tablets, smartphones, and e-readers—are visually organized and virtually navigated. Rather than imagining the field of manuscript studies as one ruptured by the proliferation of online facsimiles—in which one body of scholars, versed in a dying art of tactile research, stands in opposition to a newer cohort, literally and metaphorically unfeeling in their commitment to digitization—Brantley reminds readers of the contingency of material and virtual forms. It is for this reason, no doubt, that all of the case-study texts in her book are fully accessible online, equipped with borderline-nostalgic, page-turning features and enhanced with the ease of virtual navigation. The newfound accessibility of these landmark texts can further proliferate the practice of global medieval studies and renew appetites for manuscript investigation. In the first section of the book, a vocabulary that describes the physical features of the manuscript artifact is outlined, elucidating the later section’s “heuristic categories [which are] meant to be portable, not determinative” (115). In conjunction with the glossary, this section offers readers an arsenal of terminology, a series of keys by which the entrances to the codicological surface of the manuscript can be unlocked. These terms relate variously to material support (“the material upon which the text is inscribed” [323]); inks and pigments (lamp-black, iron gall, atramentum, lapis lazuli, scarlet kermes); paleographic scripts (calligraphic and cursive hands, Gothic, textura, secretary script); codex structure and layout (collation, binding, pricking, ruling); decoration, illumination, and illustration; as well as errors, absences, abbreviations, and editorial details. Each aspect partakes in the overall impression of the manuscript and each offers scholars ample material for interpretation, comparison, and analysis. Collectively, these terms furnish the reader’s mind with a too
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/cjm.2023.a912678
Rachael Maxon
Reviewed by: Rethinking the Ancient Druids: An Archaeological Perspective by Miranda Aldhouse-Green Rachael Maxon Miranda Aldhouse-Green, Rethinking the Ancient Druids: An Archaeological Perspective (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2021), xvii + 188 pp., 55 ills. The Druids have long stood as one of the great mysteries of the distant past. Faced with a lack of written records and scant archaeological remains, scholars have had to contend with the testimonies of late Greek and Roman writers, such as Julius Caesar, Lucan, Tacitus, Diodorus Siculus, and Cassius Dio, in order to understand these perplexing figures. Instead of accepting these foreign writers at face value, Aldhouse-Green critically engages with their testimonies and places them in context with the archaeological record in order to investigate the veracity of the ancient claims against the physical evidence. As a companion to Nora Chadwick’s 1966 monograph The Druids, Ald-house-Green’s Rethinking the Ancient Druids engages with recent archaeological excavations in Britain and Wales that show clear evidence of people with religious knowledge, that are associated with religious objects, or sites that show remains of organized ritual behavior. While Andrew Fitzpatrick also uses this approach of combining the textual and the archaeological record, Aldhouse-Green’s approach to who was considered a Druid is much broader and includes not only “those who called themselves Druids, but also those whose communities recognized them as such, as well as those who simply held religious knowledge and spiritual skills” (2). This broader definition allows her to attribute more archaeological material to the Druids. Rather than reanalyze old evidence with her new methodology, Aldhouse-Green uses the latest evidence from recent [End Page 200] archaeological investigations in Britain, Gaul, and Wales. She includes Wales even though it usually gets left out of traditional discourses, because she believes it has similar archaeological evidence to that of Britain and Gaul, and therefore should be included in discussions about the Druids, as she shows throughout the book. Two major arguments run throughout the book. The first is that the Druids may have left more traces of their existence in the archaeological record than we have come to believe. Aldhouse-Green believes that by shifting our perspectives on the available archaeological remains, we might find more traces of the Druids at sites across Britain and Wales. The second argument is that Wales had a “pivotal rather than peripheral role in a religious leadership usually portrayed as a primarily Gallic phenomenon” (3). This, she argues, can be seen once Welsh mythological texts such as the Mabinogion are combined with the Welsh archaeological record, a claim she supports primarily in chapter 5. By including the finds from Wales alongside those of Britain and Gaul, she argues that new patterns may emerge that shed light on the elusive Druids. The book
回顾:重新思考古代德鲁伊:考古视角由米兰达·奥尔德豪斯格林瑞秋·麦克森米兰达·奥尔德豪斯格林，重新思考古代德鲁伊:考古视角(加的夫:威尔士大学出版社，2021)，17 + 188页，55页。德鲁伊教长期以来一直是远古时代的一大谜团。由于缺乏书面记录和考古遗迹，学者们不得不与晚期希腊和罗马作家的证词作斗争，如朱利叶斯·凯撒、卢坎、塔西佗、狄奥多罗斯·西库鲁斯和卡西乌斯·迪奥，以理解这些令人困惑的人物。奥尔德豪斯-格林没有从表面上接受这些外国作家，而是批判性地研究他们的证词，并将它们与考古记录联系起来，以调查古代主张与实物证据的真实性。作为诺拉·查德威克(Nora Chadwick) 1966年的专著《德鲁伊》(The Druids)的同伴，阿尔德豪斯·格林(Ald-house-Green)的《重新思考古代德鲁伊》(Rethinking The Ancient Druids)与最近在英国和威尔士的考古发掘有关，这些考古发掘显示了具有宗教知识的人的明确证据，这些人与宗教物品有关，或者显示有组织的仪式行为遗迹的遗址。安德鲁·菲茨帕特里克(Andrew Fitzpatrick)也使用了这种结合文本和考古记录的方法，而奥尔德豪斯·格林(Aldhouse-Green)的方法要广泛得多，不仅包括“那些自称德鲁伊的人，还包括那些社区承认他们的人，以及那些仅仅拥有宗教知识和精神技能的人”(2)。这种更广泛的定义使她能够将更多的考古材料归因于德鲁伊。奥尔德豪斯-格林没有用她的新方法重新分析旧证据，而是使用了最近在英国、高卢和威尔士进行的考古调查的最新证据。她把威尔士也包括了进来，尽管它通常被排除在传统的论述之外，因为她认为威尔士与不列颠和高卢有着相似的考古证据，因此应该被包括在关于德鲁伊教的讨论中，就像她在书中所展示的那样。两个主要论点贯穿全书。首先，德鲁伊教在考古记录中留下的存在痕迹可能比我们认为的要多。奥尔德豪斯-格林认为，通过改变我们对现有考古遗迹的看法，我们可能会在英国和威尔士各地发现更多德鲁伊教的痕迹。第二个论点是，威尔士“在宗教领导中扮演着关键而非次要的角色，通常被描绘为主要的高卢现象”(3)。她认为，一旦将威尔士神话文本(如《马比诺吉奥翁》)与威尔士考古记录结合起来，就可以看出这一点，她在第5章主要支持了这一观点。她认为，通过将威尔士的发现与英国和高卢的发现结合起来，可能会出现新的模式，从而揭示难以捉摸的德鲁伊。全书分为九章，按主题排列。奥尔德豪斯-格林将文本与考古发现巧妙地编织在一起，讨论了德鲁伊研究的一些主要领域，如宗教、祭祀、来世的意识形态、社会组织和艺术。尽管考古记录中的许多主题都是虚无缥缈的，但她仍然毫不畏惧地追求答案，为未来的研究提出了许多问题和可能性，以便在更多证据浮出水面时进行探索。奥尔德豪斯-格林通过回顾写德鲁伊教的古典作家开始了她的研究。她以这些作家作为分析的文本基础，每章开头都引用一段话来说明该章的主题。她在第一章开始讨论凯撒大帝，她在整本书中都离不开凯撒大帝。这是因为她相信他的描述是了解德鲁伊教的最可靠的方法之一，因为他在高卢待了近十年，并与可能是德鲁伊教的埃杜伊统治者迪维西亚库斯(Diviciacus)成为朋友。她继续介绍了其他作家，如卢坎和著名的奥古斯都历史学家，并将他们置于历史背景中，以便更好地理解他们对德鲁伊教的贡献。第二章质疑古典作家关于德鲁伊教的准确性。这一章不仅调查了这些作者对……的宗教性质和等级制度的看法。
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/cjm.2023.a912671
Alice Fulmer
Abstract: Contemporary discourse around t4t (trans for trans) relationships involves speculation about bodies in transition. What do such relationships signify toward the bodies of compulsory heterosexuality, not just today, but in the historical record? In the case of the Middle English lai tradition, a t4t framework assists a postmodern audience in uncovering instances not only of gendered affects relative to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries but also of the affect economies that facilitate (or negate) gender affirmations. Romances such as Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal (a translation of a twelfth-century lai of Marie de France) exhibit romantic, platonic, and (the potentiality of) sexual relationships from which a semblance of t4t dynamics is constructively reassembled. Looking at some of the poem’s central characters and their relationships’ dynamics, both from Sir Launfal and from the larger “Lanval” tradition, provides a means from which t4t can be understood as a framework—one that measures not only affect between transgender individuals but also social systems like gift economies within the text that bear resemblance to contemporary mutual aid networks in transgender communities today. Instances of camp and parody within the romance genre historically are also observed in this paper. The gift economies in Sir Launfal and their gender affirmations propel the narrative’s resolution to demonstrate how they scaffold the genre of romance within the Middle English lai. This is an inquiry into exploring what focusing a distinctly trans lens can do when looking.
摘要:围绕t4t (trans for trans)关系的当代话语涉及对过渡中的身体的猜测。不仅在今天，而且在历史记录中，这种关系对强制性异性恋的身体意味着什么?以中古英语的lai传统为例，t4t框架不仅帮助后现代读者揭示了相对于14和15世纪的性别影响，而且还揭示了促进(或否定)性别肯定的影响经济。托马斯·切斯特(Thomas Chestre)的《朗法尔爵士》(Sir Launfal)(翻译自12世纪法国玛丽(Marie de France)的一首诗)等浪漫小说展现了浪漫的、柏拉图式的和(潜在的)性关系，从这些关系中，我们可以建设性地重新组装出一种表面上的动态。从朗法尔爵士和更大的“兰瓦尔”传统来看，这首诗的一些中心人物和他们之间的关系动态，提供了一种方法，可以将其理解为一个框架——一个不仅衡量跨性别个体之间的影响，而且衡量文本中的社会系统，如礼物经济，与当今跨性别社区的当代互助网络相似的社会系统。在历史上，本文还观察了浪漫主义流派中坎普和戏仿的例子。《劳法尔爵士》中的礼物经济和他们对性别的肯定推动了叙事的决心，以证明他们是如何在中古英语lai中支撑浪漫题材的。这是一个探究，探索聚焦一个明显的跨镜头可以做什么，当看。
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/cjm.2023.a912693
Melissa X. Stevens
Reviewed by: Imagining Anglo-Saxon England: Utopia, Heterotopia, Dystopia by Catherine E. Karkov Melissa X. Stevens Catherine E. Karkov, Imagining Anglo-Saxon England: Utopia, Heterotopia, Dystopia (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2020), vii + 272 pp., 11 ills. Imagining Anglo-Saxon England: Utopia, Dystopia, Heterotopia, by distinguished art historian Catherine E. Karkov, questions presumptions about “Anglo-Saxon” England and English claims to superiority that have resulted in centuries of violence. Karkov distinguishes between England, the literal location, and “Anglo-Saxon” England, a signifier onto which ideas about the place are projected. England has never had a single, monolithic ethnicity or culture; it has always been a heterogeneous place comprising multiple identities. Karkov argues that “Anglo-Saxon” England is a signpost onto which is mapped the identities, ideologies, “empty ideas and hierarchies that have emerged within Anglo-Saxonism” (26). This distinction enables her to separate the field of early [End Page 237] medieval studies from contemporary white supremacist groups that endorse racist, homophobic, and misogynist ideologies while misappropriating early medieval English and Viking myths, legends, objects, words, and symbols. The Angles and Saxons were two of the Germanic groups that migrated to England during and after the Roman occupation. Karkov frames the underlying argument by stipulating that people who populated early medieval England and came to be known collectively as the “Anglo-Saxons” viewed themselves—via a set of compelling origin myths—as a chosen people arriving in a promised land. These myths facilitated the denial and erasure of the violence they committed against the land’s original inhabitants, retelling these atrocities as supernaturally preordained. This cultural tendency repeated as the English colonized other parts of the world. Karkov’s critical theoretical analyses of several early medieval English texts utilize psychoanalytical and philosophical concepts of time and space, particularly utopia and its variants, dystopia, heterotopia, and retrotopia. She uses encryption to propose that the early English denied and erased the brutality of their origins while simultaneously perpetuating the illusion of superiority, enabling them to continue practicing invasion, usurpation, and settler colonialism. According to Karkov, they accomplished this via conceptions of utopia, a discontent with the present that leads to anticipating a different future. She examines the political and cultural implications of stories about “Anglo-Saxon” England that have hugely impacted early medieval English scholarship, creating the foundation for attitudes that endure, manifesting as gatekeeping in today’s politics, popular culture, and the academy. Karkov employs several theoretical concepts to address the idea of utopia underlying the construct of “Anglo-Saxon” England. She suggests that the idea of the uncanny can demonstrate how the En
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/cjm.2023.a912688
Amanda Coate
Reviewed by: Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland: From Farm-Settlement to Sagas by Harriet J. Evans Tang Amanda Coate Harriet J. Evans Tang, Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland: From Farm-Settlement to Sagas (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2022), 258 pp., 14 ills. In Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland, Harriet J. Evans Tang examines interactions between humans and other animals in medieval Iceland. Evans Tang approaches this topic using multiple disciplines and a variety of sources (including literature, legal texts, and archaeological evidence), and illustrates the numerous ways in which animals participated in and influenced Icelandic society [End Page 225] and culture. Chapter 1 considers the roles of domestic animals in the settlement of Iceland during the late ninth and early tenth centuries. It employs archaeological evidence, the Landnámabók (a work that describes the settlement of Iceland, the oldest surviving copies of which date to the thirteenth century), and selected Íslendingasögur (sagas of Icelanders, likely compiled between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries but containing narratives set several centuries earlier). Evans Tang argues that Iceland underwent a “co-settlement” dependent on “mutual care and cooperation, and the apparent mediatory role of animals between humans and their new land” (23). The Landnámabók and sagas depicted animals—sometimes in the guise of paranormal entities such as “land-spirits,” other times as more naturalistic animals—as variously aiding settlers by leading them to desirable land, escaping settlers’ control to form their own communities, and hindering settlers’ prosperity. This shared animal-human process of settlement led to shared animal-human living spaces, and chapter 2 discusses archaeological findings of potential animal-buildings at two Viking Age sites: Vatnsfjörður in the Westfjords and Sveigakot in northern Iceland. Drawing on archaeologist Kristin Armstrong Oma’s concept of animal-human “meeting points” and spatial analysis techniques, Evans Tang demonstrates how settlers built in response to the needs of domestic animals and how the organization of farmsteads might have impacted the daily interactions between animals and humans that occurred there. One avenue of research that might be explored further is Evans Tang’s hypothesis that the compilers of the Landnámabók and the sagas sought to depict a version of Icelandic settlement that “create[d] longevity for ideas of Icelanders as responsible farmers” (50). That is, these textual sources emphasized Icelanders’ interactions with domestic animals and their importance to settlement. However, Evans Tang notes that some archaeologists have recently proposed that the earliest settlement of Iceland was motivated by walrus-hunting. If this turns out to be the case, what would have been the cultural impacts of such a shift from walrus-hunting, which implies a close entanglement with animals in the wilderness, to an
{"title":"Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland: From Farm-Settlement to Sagas by Harriet J. Evans Tang (review)","authors":"Amanda Coate","doi":"10.1353/cjm.2023.a912688","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cjm.2023.a912688","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland: From Farm-Settlement to Sagas by Harriet J. Evans Tang Amanda Coate Harriet J. Evans Tang, Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland: From Farm-Settlement to Sagas (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2022), 258 pp., 14 ills. In Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland, Harriet J. Evans Tang examines interactions between humans and other animals in medieval Iceland. Evans Tang approaches this topic using multiple disciplines and a variety of sources (including literature, legal texts, and archaeological evidence), and illustrates the numerous ways in which animals participated in and influenced Icelandic society [End Page 225] and culture. Chapter 1 considers the roles of domestic animals in the settlement of Iceland during the late ninth and early tenth centuries. It employs archaeological evidence, the Landnámabók (a work that describes the settlement of Iceland, the oldest surviving copies of which date to the thirteenth century), and selected Íslendingasögur (sagas of Icelanders, likely compiled between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries but containing narratives set several centuries earlier). Evans Tang argues that Iceland underwent a “co-settlement” dependent on “mutual care and cooperation, and the apparent mediatory role of animals between humans and their new land” (23). The Landnámabók and sagas depicted animals—sometimes in the guise of paranormal entities such as “land-spirits,” other times as more naturalistic animals—as variously aiding settlers by leading them to desirable land, escaping settlers’ control to form their own communities, and hindering settlers’ prosperity. This shared animal-human process of settlement led to shared animal-human living spaces, and chapter 2 discusses archaeological findings of potential animal-buildings at two Viking Age sites: Vatnsfjörður in the Westfjords and Sveigakot in northern Iceland. Drawing on archaeologist Kristin Armstrong Oma’s concept of animal-human “meeting points” and spatial analysis techniques, Evans Tang demonstrates how settlers built in response to the needs of domestic animals and how the organization of farmsteads might have impacted the daily interactions between animals and humans that occurred there. One avenue of research that might be explored further is Evans Tang’s hypothesis that the compilers of the Landnámabók and the sagas sought to depict a version of Icelandic settlement that “create[d] longevity for ideas of Icelanders as responsible farmers” (50). That is, these textual sources emphasized Icelanders’ interactions with domestic animals and their importance to settlement. However, Evans Tang notes that some archaeologists have recently proposed that the earliest settlement of Iceland was motivated by walrus-hunting. If this turns out to be the case, what would have been the cultural impacts of such a shift from walrus-hunting, which implies a close entanglement with animals in the wilderness, to an","PeriodicalId":53903,"journal":{"name":"COMITATUS-A JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE STUDIES","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135712615","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/cjm.2023.a912692
Benjamin Bertrand
Reviewed by: Bishop Æthelwold, His Followers, and Saints’ Cults in Early Medieval England: Power, Belief, and Religious Reform by Alison Hudson Benjamin Bertrand Alison Hudson, Bishop Æthelwold, His Followers, and Saints’ Cults in Early Medieval England: Power, Belief, and Religious Reform (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2022), xvi + 293 pp., 10 ills. Alison Hudson’s first monograph, the latest volume in the Anglo-Saxon Studies series, is an ambitious work that aims to recontextualize the reforms of Bishop Æthelwold and his followers through a hagiographical lens. A specialist in early medieval England, Hudson has served as a Project Coordinator for Early Medieval English Manuscripts at the British Library and published extensively on this period. Her new book marshals her impressive command of the manuscript sources to reconsider how Æthelwold and his followers used the worship of saints to influence the laity and shore up their political and economic base. Hudson focuses on the bishop’s “circle,” whom she describes as “the men and women who staffed and/or were trained at the houses Æthelwold refounded … because they were conscious of their links to each other, identifying themselves as ‘alumni Æthelwoldi’” (3). Pushing back against scholars such as Eric John who argued that this group’s reforms were made possible only through royal backing, she argues that “they also … interacted and engaged with groups outside their monasteries, and thereby sought to gain others’ support” (225). Hudson analyzes how this circle carefully encouraged the veneration of certain saints to achieve their political and religious goals as part of their reform program. Using the introduction and first chapter to lay out the terms of her analysis and establish her historiographical intervention, Hudson suggests that Æthelwold and his circle’s choice of saints had more to do with constituencies outside the monastery than with monastic worship. She identifies three contexts for saintly veneration, which she describes as “‘individual,’ ‘intra-communal,’ and ‘supra-communal’” (18). Although the majority of the book focuses on the third category, Hudson does not discount the importance of the worship of saints by individual monks and monastic communities. Her first chapter considers veneration of saints in individual prayers and monastic life by considering their role in education and in daily readings, relying upon sources such as Æthelwold’s Regularis concordia. Hudson pushes back against previous scholarship that argued that the the circle focused primarily on the worship of local saints and especially those mentioned by the Venerable Bede. She argues instead that in individual and monastic spaces, the monks generally favored the same continental saints being worshipped in the Carolingian world. Accordingly, she notes that their use of local saints was instead an attempt to reach external audiences through “supra-communal” veneration. Hudson explains that this form of worship allowed
{"title":"Bishop Æthelwold, His Followers, and Saints’ Cults in Early Medieval England: Power, Belief, and Religious Reform by Alison Hudson (review)","authors":"Benjamin Bertrand","doi":"10.1353/cjm.2023.a912692","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cjm.2023.a912692","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Bishop Æthelwold, His Followers, and Saints’ Cults in Early Medieval England: Power, Belief, and Religious Reform by Alison Hudson Benjamin Bertrand Alison Hudson, Bishop Æthelwold, His Followers, and Saints’ Cults in Early Medieval England: Power, Belief, and Religious Reform (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2022), xvi + 293 pp., 10 ills. Alison Hudson’s first monograph, the latest volume in the Anglo-Saxon Studies series, is an ambitious work that aims to recontextualize the reforms of Bishop Æthelwold and his followers through a hagiographical lens. A specialist in early medieval England, Hudson has served as a Project Coordinator for Early Medieval English Manuscripts at the British Library and published extensively on this period. Her new book marshals her impressive command of the manuscript sources to reconsider how Æthelwold and his followers used the worship of saints to influence the laity and shore up their political and economic base. Hudson focuses on the bishop’s “circle,” whom she describes as “the men and women who staffed and/or were trained at the houses Æthelwold refounded … because they were conscious of their links to each other, identifying themselves as ‘alumni Æthelwoldi’” (3). Pushing back against scholars such as Eric John who argued that this group’s reforms were made possible only through royal backing, she argues that “they also … interacted and engaged with groups outside their monasteries, and thereby sought to gain others’ support” (225). Hudson analyzes how this circle carefully encouraged the veneration of certain saints to achieve their political and religious goals as part of their reform program. Using the introduction and first chapter to lay out the terms of her analysis and establish her historiographical intervention, Hudson suggests that Æthelwold and his circle’s choice of saints had more to do with constituencies outside the monastery than with monastic worship. She identifies three contexts for saintly veneration, which she describes as “‘individual,’ ‘intra-communal,’ and ‘supra-communal’” (18). Although the majority of the book focuses on the third category, Hudson does not discount the importance of the worship of saints by individual monks and monastic communities. Her first chapter considers veneration of saints in individual prayers and monastic life by considering their role in education and in daily readings, relying upon sources such as Æthelwold’s Regularis concordia. Hudson pushes back against previous scholarship that argued that the the circle focused primarily on the worship of local saints and especially those mentioned by the Venerable Bede. She argues instead that in individual and monastic spaces, the monks generally favored the same continental saints being worshipped in the Carolingian world. Accordingly, she notes that their use of local saints was instead an attempt to reach external audiences through “supra-communal” veneration. Hudson explains that this form of worship allowed","PeriodicalId":53903,"journal":{"name":"COMITATUS-A JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE STUDIES","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135710995","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/cjm.2023.a912670
Wesley Gaines
Abstract: The conventional narrative of the conversion of Scandinavia to Christianity depicts a top-down, mass conversion carried out by the monarchs of Scandinavian kingdoms. This paper adds to these analyses the preexisting economic relationship between trade towns of Latin Christendom with Scandinavia and the Baltic and credits this trade for carrying ideas and cultural norms to the region, as well as for establishing trade routes along which missionaries would follow in the footsteps of these merchants. It traces the establishment of official bishoprics and sees of the Latin Church in Scandinavian and Baltic trade towns as well as the adoption of distinctly European forms of social organization. It also lends agency to the people of Scandinavia themselves, adding to the narrative their understudied role in the process by crediting their chieftains with willfully and strategically importing Christianity for their own gain rather than depicting them as passive agents with change foisted upon them from the outside. The primary sources bear out not an immediate change, but a gradual one, carried out not by armies and kings, but by merchants and trades-men, clergy and chieftains in their daily interactions, which built up social networks, compiled social trust, and contagiously spread cultural norms.
{"title":"Brokers of Salvation: Merchants and Missionaries in the Europeanization of the North, 800–1300","authors":"Wesley Gaines","doi":"10.1353/cjm.2023.a912670","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cjm.2023.a912670","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: The conventional narrative of the conversion of Scandinavia to Christianity depicts a top-down, mass conversion carried out by the monarchs of Scandinavian kingdoms. This paper adds to these analyses the preexisting economic relationship between trade towns of Latin Christendom with Scandinavia and the Baltic and credits this trade for carrying ideas and cultural norms to the region, as well as for establishing trade routes along which missionaries would follow in the footsteps of these merchants. It traces the establishment of official bishoprics and sees of the Latin Church in Scandinavian and Baltic trade towns as well as the adoption of distinctly European forms of social organization. It also lends agency to the people of Scandinavia themselves, adding to the narrative their understudied role in the process by crediting their chieftains with willfully and strategically importing Christianity for their own gain rather than depicting them as passive agents with change foisted upon them from the outside. The primary sources bear out not an immediate change, but a gradual one, carried out not by armies and kings, but by merchants and trades-men, clergy and chieftains in their daily interactions, which built up social networks, compiled social trust, and contagiously spread cultural norms.","PeriodicalId":53903,"journal":{"name":"COMITATUS-A JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE STUDIES","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135712597","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/cjm.2023.a912701
Leslie S. Jacoby
Reviewed by: Hawking Women: Falconry, Gender, and Control in Medieval Literary Culture by Sara Petrosillo Leslie S. Jacoby Sara Petrosillo, Hawking Women: Falconry, Gender, and Control in Medieval Literary Culture (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2023), 200 pp., 11 ills. In Hawking Women, Sara Petrosillo presents an ambitious summation and analysis of recent scholarship on medieval falconry and its feminine and literary culture as intertwined motifs, protagonists, narratives, and aesthetics. She broaches this from medieval poetics, premodern feminist theories, animal studies, avian treatises and household conduct books, sigillographic iconography, the mal mariée, and more. Each chapter is entitled with an element of falconry as a measurable metaphoric structural construct; upon these, she connects context of scientific treatises, several canzoni, well-known and lesser-known lais, an Old French dit, and Chaucerian works. These varied works are examined for their control poetics, to parallel the art of training hawks, misogynistic feminine submission, contemporary and modern reading practices, and bygone medieval falconry practicum and its influence over the social status of women, who may have participated in hunting arts and their literary presentation of such. Petrosillo acknowledges her analysis stems largely from an ecofeminist apparatus, which aims to understand feminine intimacy between woman and her avian charge as means to immerse a paradoxical crossing of cultural practices and aesthetic poetic narratives. In “Control,” Petrosillo explores De arte venandi cum avibus, and other [End Page 257] significant avian treatises, to broach falconry practices as contradictory constructs for theorizing textual narratives. Petrosillo redresses previous scholars who have treated the same medieval source materials (falconry practicum) and relays a foundational argument informing her book. The Frederician context of medieval falconry practices function as an artform, one requiring knowledge and active apprenticeship experience. Frederick’s treatise contributes substantially to early ornithological science and aestheticizes falconry ars as one of the seven liberal arts. Frederick credits his courtier-falconer-poet(s) as skilled scientists and translators (Rinaldo d’Aquino, Jacopo Mostacci, Theodore of Antioch, Michael Scot), embracing essential elements from Arabic falconry practices. Petrosillo looks at ars venandi (hunting arts) and ars poetica following the Arabic ṭardiyyah genre and its incorporation of birds in flight as a poetic bravura form. In “Release,” Petrosillo examines gender roles in hawking imagery in poetics and material artifacts as forms of self-identity, self-representation, and self-authority. She uses “Tapina in me” to consider the rise of Sicilian poetry as reflective of medieval modes of representation, as a kind of feminine control over release and recapture. Underscoring the thirteenth-century limited understanding of r
《霍金女人:中世纪文学文化中的猎鹰、性别和控制》，作者:萨拉·彼得罗西略莱斯利·s·雅各比·萨拉·彼得罗西略，《霍金女人:中世纪文学文化中的猎鹰、性别和控制》(哥伦布:俄亥俄州立大学出版社，2023年)，200页，11页。在《霍金女人》一书中，萨拉·彼得罗西略对中世纪猎鹰及其女性文化与文学文化交织在一起的主题、主角、叙事和美学进行了雄心勃勃的总结和分析。她从中世纪诗学、前现代女权主义理论、动物研究、鸟类论文和家庭行为书籍、象形文字肖像学、mal mariacime等方面入手。每一章的标题都有一个猎鹰元素作为一个可测量的隐喻结构结构;在此基础上，她将科学论文的背景、一些canzoni、知名的和不太知名的lais、古法国的dit和乔叟的作品联系起来。这些不同的作品被考察为它们的控制诗学，与训练鹰的艺术、厌恶女性的女性服从、当代和现代的阅读实践、过去的中世纪猎鹰实践及其对女性社会地位的影响平行，她们可能参与了狩猎艺术及其文学表现。Petrosillo承认她的分析很大程度上源于生态女性主义的工具，其目的是理解女性和她的鸟类之间的女性亲密关系，作为一种沉浸在文化实践和美学诗意叙事的矛盾交叉中的手段。在《控制》一书中，Petrosillo探讨了De arte venandi cum avibus和其他重要的鸟类论文，将猎鹰实践作为理论化文本叙事的矛盾结构。Petrosillo纠正了之前的学者处理过同样的中世纪原始材料(鹰猎实习)，并传达了一个基本的论点，为她的书提供了信息。在弗雷德里西亚，中世纪的猎鹰实践是一种艺术形式，需要知识和积极的学徒经验。弗雷德里克的论文对早期鸟类学做出了重大贡献，并将鹰猎作为七门文科之一进行了审美化。弗雷德里克认为，他的侍臣、驯鹰诗人是熟练的科学家和翻译(里纳尔多·达基诺、雅各布·莫斯塔奇、安提阿克的西奥多、迈克尔·斯科特)，他们接受了阿拉伯驯鹰实践的基本元素。Petrosillo着眼于ars venandi(狩猎艺术)和ars poetica，遵循阿拉伯语ṭardiyyah流派，并将飞行中的鸟类作为诗歌的勇敢形式结合起来。在《释放》一书中，彼得罗西略考察了诗学和物质制品中作为自我认同、自我表现和自我权威形式的贩卖意象中的性别角色。她用《Tapina in me》来思考西西里诗歌的兴起是中世纪表现模式的反映，是一种女性对释放和重新获得的控制。彼得罗西略考察了无名叙述者和她的爱人被抛弃的经历，强调了13世纪对两性异形的有限理解，即天生更大的女性水龙头胜过男性雄鹰。Petrosillo将十四行诗的结构定位为矛盾的结构，八度和设置，以配合一种猎鹰的幻想，认为十四行诗中使用的鸟是挣扎着对自由的渴望但又生活在驯化约束下的雌性。Petrosillo用男性声音的十四行诗“Vis’amoros”来平衡“Tapina”，分析了上下文，诗学和意象，以科学论文提供了持有和管理(处理)鸟类的指导，以支持这种猎鹰的幻想。Petrosillo将女性驯鹰人的象形文字图像作为女性权威的证据。她质疑我们是否能理解男性驯鹰者训练女鹰的二元解释，指出这些静态图像混淆了真正的女性视角及其在男女等级制度中的地位。在《围城》中，一部13世纪的杂集被用来比较/对比连续的作品:盎格鲁-诺曼诗歌翻译的《阿维布斯·特拉图斯》和玛丽·德·弗朗斯的《序言》和《约涅克》。Petrosillo在诗歌形式和语境中建立了捕获的鹰的重要共同意义，作为导致语境减少的矛盾形式。彼得罗西略用这些作品的物理位置作为推理，猎鹰特别适合玛丽的诗学。作者和读者之间固有的紧张关系始于《尤涅克》中无名的女主人公，她在塔式监狱中的解释性囚禁，以及她与一位名叫Muldumarec的鹰派骑士的相遇，后者帮助她挣脱束缚，并生下了一个名叫尤涅克的儿子。所有这些都揭示了玛丽所倡导的冒险和诗歌中圈地功能概念的更深层次的美学……
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