Literary Criticism : Medieval

Christians face a conundrum when it comes to naming God, for if God is unnamable, as theologians maintain, he can also be called by every name. His proper name is thus an open-ended, all-encompassing list, a mystery the Church embraces in its rhetoric, but which many Christians have found difficult to accept. To explore this conflict, Valentina Izmirlieva examines two lists of God’s names: one from The Divine Names, the classic treatise by Pseudo-Dionysius, and the other from The 72 Names of the Lord, an amulet whose history binds together Kabbalah and Christianity, Jews and Slavs, Palestine, Provence, and the Balkans. This unexpected juxtaposition of a theological treatise and a magical amulet allows Izmirlieva to reveal lists’ rhetorical potential to create order and to function as both tools of knowledge and of power. Despite the two different visions of order represented by each list, Izmirlieva finds that their uses in Christian practice point to a complementary relationship between the existential need for God’s protection and the metaphysical desire to submit to his infinite majesty—a compelling claim sure to provoke discussion among scholars in many fields. more...

Price: $45.00

Drawing on a combination of queer and feminist theory, ethical criticism, and psychoanalytic, historicist, and textual criticism, Diane Watt focuses on the language, sex, and politics in Gower’s writing. She demonstrates that Gower engaged in the sort of critical thinking more commonly associated with Chaucer and William Langland and contributes to modern debates about the ethics of criticism. more...

Price: $72.00

This volume of Arthurian Literature continues the tradition of the journal, combining critical studies with editions of primary Arthurian texts. Varied in their linguistic and chronological coverage, the articles deal with major areas of Arthurian studies, from early French romance through late medieval English chronicle to contemporary fiction. Topics include Béroul's Tristan, Tristan de Nanteuil, the Anglo-Norman Brut, and the Morte, while an edition of the text of an extrait of Chrétien's Erec et Enide prepared by the eighteenth-century scholar La Curne de Sainte-Palaye offers important insights into both scholarship on Chrétien, and our understanding of the Enlightenment. more...

Price: $85.00

In her thorough examination of Gower's work, Ellen S. Bakalian shows how Gower emphasizes and illustrates a belief that reason much rule man inn all things, including his natural instincts to love. more...

Price: $115.00

This anthology describes the European book culture of premodern times with regard to the material publication of handwriting and early print, their contents and forms of use, as well as the preconceptions associated with them. The relationship to and diff more...

Price: $132.30