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Although the city as a central entity did not simply disappear with the Fall of the Roman Empire, the development of urban space at least since the twelfth century played a major role in the history of medieval and early modern mentality within a social-economic and religious framework. Whereas some poets projected urban space as a new utopia, others simply reflected the new significance of the urban environment as a stage where their characters operate very successfully. As today, the premodern city was the locus where different social groups and classes got together, sometimes peacefully, sometimes in hostile terms. The historical development of the relationship between Christians and Jews, for instance, was deeply determined by the living conditions within a city. By the late Middle Ages, nobility and bourgeoisie began to intermingle within the urban space, which set the stage for dramatic and far-reaching changes in the social and economic make-up of society. Legal-historical aspects also find as much consideration as practical questions concerning water supply and sewer systems. Moreover, the early modern city within the Ottoman and Middle Eastern world likewise finds consideration. Finally, as some contributors observe, the urban space provided considerable opportunities for women to carve out a niche for themselves in economic terms.
The rhetorical trope of irony is well-trod territory, with books and essays devoted to its use by a wide range of medieval and Renaissance writers, from the Beowulf-poet and Chaucer to Boccaccio and Shakespeare; however, the use of sarcasm, the "flesh tearing" form of irony, in the same literature has seldom been studied at length or in depth. Sarcasm is notoriously difficult to pick out in a written text, since it relies so much on tone of voice and context. This is the first book-length study of medieval and Renaissance sarcasm. Its fourteen essays treat instances in a range of genres, both sacred and secular, and of cultures from Anglo-Saxon to Arabic, where the combination of circumstance and word choice makes it absolutely clear that the speaker, whether a character or a narrator, is being sarcastic. Essays address, among other things, the clues writers give that sarcasm is at work, how it conforms to or deviates from contemporary rhetorical theories, what role it plays in building character or theme, and how sarcasm conforms to the Christian milieu of medieval Europe, and beyond to medieval Arabic literature. The collection thus illuminates a half-hidden but surprisingly common early literary technique for modern readers.
This book offers a new view of Italian Renaissance intellectual life, linking philosophy and literature as expressed in both Latin and Italian.
Dante's Comedy and the Ethics of Invective in Medieval Italy proposes a new approach to invective and comic poetry in Italy during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and opens the way for an innovative understanding of Dante’s masterpiece. The Middle Ages in Italy offer a wealth of vernacular poetic invectives—polemical verses aimed at blaming specific wrongdoings of an individual, group, city or institution— that are both understudied and rarely juxtaposed. No study has yet provided a scholarly examination of the connection between this medieval invective tradition, and its elements of humor, derision, and reprehension in Dante’s Comedy. This book argues that these comic texts are rooted in and actively engaged with the social, political, and religious conflicts of their time. Political invective has a dynamic ethical orientation that is mediated by a humor that disarms excessive hostility against its individual targets, providing an opening for dialogue. While exploring medieval comic poems by Rustico Filippi (from Florence), Cecco Angiolieri (from Siena), and Folgore da San Gimignano, this study unveils new biographical data about these poets retrieved from Italian state archives (most of these data are published here in English for the very first time), and ultimately shows what the medieval invective tradition can add to our understanding of Dante’s Comedy.
Engaging Eriugena, Eckhart and Cusanus contains two new essays and nine others published between 2005 and 2019. The essays explore Eriugena, Eckhart and Cusanus as bold thinkers deeply engaged with their times and culture. John Scottus Eriugena, Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa are key figures in the medieval Christian Neoplatonic tradition. This book focuses on their engagement with practical, experiential issues and controversies. Eriugena revises Genesis’ Adam and Eve narrative and makes sexual difference and overcoming it central to his Periphyseon. Eckhart’s Annunciation sermons urge his hearers to give birth to God’s son within their lives, and he develops a distinctive approach to pain and suffering. His radical preaching on the Eucharist and mystical union was judged heretical but was later taken up by Nicholas of Cusa. Coins and banking became key symbols in Cusanus’ exploration of humanity as created in God’s image, and he used mechanical clocks in reflecting on time and eternity. "Engagement" also describes these thinkers’ reception of their predecessors and how later readers appropriated their works. Eriugena struggled with the legacy of Augustine and the Greek Fathers. Eckhart’s theology of suffering provoked varied responses from his students Henry Suso, Johannes Tauler and the twentieth-century therapist Ursula Fleming. Cusanus provides the volume’s lynchpin as two articles analyse his reading of Eriugena and Eckhart, and a third discusses how he deftly countered Johannes Wenck’s accusations of heresy. The book will be of interest to students of Medieval Philosophy, Theology, Spirituality and their place within Cultural History.
A study and edition of one of the most ignored works of early Spanish literature because of its strong sexual content, this work examines the social ideology that conditioned the reactions of people to the events it describes as well as Fernando de Rojas's masterpiece, Celestina.
This important study takes a new approach to understanding Italian Renaissance humanism, one of the most important cultural movements in Western history. Through a series of close textual studies, Patrick Baker explores the meaning that Italian Renaissance humanism had for an essential but neglected group: the humanists themselves.
This is the fourth in this popular series of poetry books by Jean Hill. Acclaimed for real life, viewed from a thought provoking angle, sometimes reflective, often humorous, and occasionally sad, but always captivating. Topical poetry to make you laugh and cry. The perfect gift.