Geoffrey Chaucer was arguably fourteenth-century England's greatest poet. In the nineteenth century, readers of Chaucer's early dream poems - the Book of the Duchess, House of Fame, and Parliament of Fowles - began to detect a tripartite model of his artistic development from a French to an Italian, and finally to an English phase. They fleshed out this model with the liberation narrative, the inspiring story of how Chaucer escaped the emasculating French house of bondage to become the generative father of English poetry. Although this division has now largely been dismissed, both the tripartite model and the accompanying liberation narrative persist in Chaucer criticism. In Chaucer's Queer Poetics, Susan Schibanoff interrogates why the tripartite model remains so tenacious even when literary history does not support it. Revealing deeply rooted Francophobic, homophobic, and nationalistic biases, Schibanoff examines the development paradigm and demonstrates that 'liberated Chaucer' depends on antiquated readings of key source texts for the dream trilogy. This study challenges the long held view the Chaucer fled the prison of effete French court verse to become the 'natural' English father poet and charts a new model of Chaucerian poetic development that discovers the emergence of a queer aesthetic in his work.

The first comprehensive study of the philosophical achievements of twelfth-century Western Europe.

The Medieval Classic considers how ancient and medieval commentaries on the Aeneid by Servius, Fulgentius, Bernard Silvestris, and others can give us new insights into four twelfth-century Latin epics -- the Ylias by Joseph of Exeter, the Alexandreis by Walter of Châtillon, the Anticlaudianus by Alan of Lille, and the Architrenius by John of Hauville. Justin Haynes argues that the most profound connections between medieval epic and the Aeneid have been overlooked because ancient and medieval interpretations, as preserved by the commentary tradition, were often radically different from modern ones. By explaining how to interpret the Aeneid, these commentaries directly influenced the way in which medieval authors were inspired by the poem. At the same time, these commentaries allow us a greater awareness of the generic expectations held by medieval readers. Because two of the medieval epics considered here are allegorical narratives, this book offers new perspectives on the importance of commentaries in the development of allegorical literature. Thus, The Medieval Classic contributes to our understanding of ancient and medieval perceptions of the Aeneid while exploring the importance of commentaries in shaping poetic composition, imitation, and the history of allegorical literature.

In Western religious traditions, God is conventionally conceived as a humanlike creator, lawgiver, and king, a being both accessible and actively present in history. Yet there is a concurrent and strong tradition of a God who actively hides. The two traditions have led to a tension between a God who is simultaneously accessible to humanity and yet inaccessible, a God who is both immanent and transcendent, present and absent. Western Gnostic, esoteric, and mystical thinking capitalizes on the hidden and hiding God. He becomes the hallmark of the mystics, Gnostics, sages, and artists who attempt to make accessible to humans the God who is secreted away. 'Histories of the Hidden God' explores this tradition from antiquity to today. The essays focus on three essential themes: the concealment of the hidden God; the human quest for the hidden God, and revelations of the hidden God.

Alan of Lille was a notable figure in the second half of the twelfth century as a theologian and as a poet and he has seemed as rich and individual a writer to modern scholars as he did to his own contemporaries. This study examines his work as a whole, in an attempt to set his well-known literary achievement in the context of his theological writings. He was in many ways a pioneer, an experimenter with several of the new genres of his day, an innovator both as a teacher and as an author. He was not an original thinker so much as an eclectic, drawing on a wide range of the sources available to his contemporaries. He shows us what might be done by a lively-minded scholar with the resources of the day, within the schools of late twelfth-century France, to bring theology alive and make it interesting and challenging to his readers.

First published in 2006, Key Figures in Medieval Europe, brings together in one volume the most important people who lived in medieval Europe between 500 and 1500. Gathered from the biographical entries from the series, Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages, these A-Z biographical entries discuss the lives of over 575 individuals who have had a historical impact in such areas as politics, religion, and the arts. It includes individuals from places such as medieval England, France, Germany, Iberia, Italy, and Scandinavia, as well as those from the Jewish and Islamic worlds. In one convenient volume, students, scholars, and interested readers will find the biographies of the people whose actions, beliefs, creations, and writings shaped the Middle Ages, one of the most fascinating periods of world history.

Classica et Mediaevalia is an international periodical, published annually, with articles written by Danish and international scholars. The articles are mainly written in English, but also in French and German. The periodical deals from a philological point of view on Classical Antiquity in general and topics such as history of law and philosophy and the medieval ecclesiastic history. It covers the period from the Greco-Roman Antiquity until the Late Middle Ages. Volume 55 contents include: The Date of Xenophon's PoroiSocratic Apologetics in Xenophon's Symposionberlegungen zur Argumentationsstruktur in Platons ProtagorasTrial by Riddle: The Testing of the Counsellor and the Contest of Kings in the Legend of Amasis and BiasHorace on Tradition and the Individul Talent: Ars Poetica 119-52L'Itinerarium Egeriae: un point de vue littaire INemo Mecenas, nemo modo Cesar. Die Idee der Literaturfrderung in der lateinischen Dichtung des hohen MittelaltersOn the Composition of Herbert Lo

From emperors and queens to artists and world travelers, from popes and scholars to saints and heretics, Key Figures in Medieval Europe brings together in one volume the most important people who lived in medieval Europe between 500 and 1500. Gathered from the biographical entries from the on-going series, the Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages, these A-Z biographical entries discuss the lives of over 575 individuals who have had a historical impact in such areas as politics, religion, or the arts. Individuals from places such as medieval England, France, Germany, Iberia, Italy, and Scandinavia are included as well as those from the Jewish and Islamic worlds. A thematic outline is included that lists people not only by categories, but also by regions. For a full list of entries, contributors, and more, visit the Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages website.

From c. 1100 until c. 1170, Latin prosimetrical texts characterized by dialogue, allegory, and philosophical speculation enjoyed a notable popularity within the cultural ambit of the French cathedral schools. Inspired by Boethiusa (TM) "Consolation of Philosophy," the prosimetrum writers applied his literary techniques to the ethical and anthropological concerns of their own era, producing texts of great artistry in the process. This book investigates the rise of the Boethian impulse in Latin, the innovations of the twelfth-century writers, the difficulties that arose when they attempted to recapture the certainty that characterized the "Consolation," and the survival of aspects of this literary mode in later Latin and vernacular literature.