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During the Middle Ages, Mary was the most powerful of saints, and the combination of her humanity and her proximity to the divine captured the medieval imagination. Her importance is nowhere more clearly reflected than in the genre of “Miracles of the Virgin,” short narrative accounts of Mary’s miraculous intercessory powers. These stories tend to fit a basic narrative pattern in which Mary saves a devoted believer from spiritual or physical danger—but beneath this surface simplicity, the Miracles frequently evoke fine or revealing theological, social, and cultural distinctions. They are remarkably various in tone, ranging from the darkly serious to the comically scandalous, and many display anti-Semitism to a greater degree or with greater punch than do other medieval genres. Mary herself takes on a variety of characteristics, appearing as dominant and persuasive more often than she appears as gentle and maternal. This volume offers a small but representative sampling of what survives of this literature in the English language. The Middle English has been helpfully glossed and annotated, and is lightly modernized for ease of reading; one particularly challenging story is translated in facing-page format. The “In Context” sections provide relevant biblical passages and medieval versions of the Christian prayers frequently evoked in the miracles; additional samples of Marian poetry and medieval illustrations of Marian miracles are also included.
Bi- and multilingualism are of great interest for contemporary linguists since this phenomenon deeply reflects on language acquisition, language use, and sociolinguistic conditions in many different circumstances all over the world. Multilingualism was, however, certainly rather common already, if not especially, in the premodern world. For some time now, research has started to explore this issue through a number of specialized studies. The present volume continues with the investigation of multilingualism through a collection of case studies focusing on important examples in medieval and early modern societies, that is, in linguistic and cultural contact zones, such as England, Spain, the Holy Land, but also the New World. As all contributors confirm, the numerous cases of multilingualism discussed here indicate strongly that the premodern period knew considerably less barriers between people of different social classes, cultural background, and religious orientation. But we also have to acknowledge that already then human communication could fail because of linguistic hurdles which prevented mutual understanding in religious and cultural terms.
Helen L. Parish presents an innovative new study of Reformation attitudes to medieval Christianity, revealing the process by which the medieval past was rewritten by Reformation propagandists. This fascinating account sheds light on how the myths and legends of the middle ages were reconstructed, reinterpreted, and formed into a historical base for the Protestant church in the sixteenth century. Crossing the often artificial boundary between medieval and modern history, Parish draws upon a valuable selection of writings on the lives of the saints from both periods, and addresses ongoing debates over the relationship between religion and the supernatural in early modern Europe. Setting key case studies in a broad conceptual framework, Monks, Miracles and Magic is essential reading for all those with an interest in the construction of the Protestant church, and its medieval past.
The Handbook of Historical Pragmatics provides an authoritative and accessible overview of this versatile new field in pragmatics devoted to a diachronic study of language use and human interaction in context. It covers all areas of historical pragmatics from grammaticalization theory to pragmatic entities, such as discourse markers, speech acts and politeness to individual discourse domains from scientific writing to literary discourse. Each contribution, written by a leading specialist, gives a succinct, representative and up-to-date overview of research questions, theories, methods and recent developments in the field.
Few subjects of the English stage have proved more alluring and enduring than religious conversion. The emergence of the Elizabethan theatre marked a profound shift in the way in which conversion was presented. If medieval drama had encouraged conversion without reservation, early Elizabethan plays started to question it. Considering over forty canonical and lesser known works, this study argues that more so than any other medium, early modern drama engaged with the question of the possibility of undergoing a radical transformation in faith and presented the period's understanding of it as fundamentally unsettled. Offering the first cross-religious exploration of conversion in early modern English drama, and presenting a new reading of William Shakespeare's tragedy Othello, Lieke Stelling reveals telling patterns in the stage's treatment of conversion and religious identity.
Were mid-Tudor evangelicals roaring lions or meek lambs? Did they struggle with a minority complex, or were they comfortable with their position of political ascendancy under Edward VI? How did their theological blueprint of the ‘True Church’ fit their temporal realities? By relocating the Book of Common Prayer at the centre of the English Reformation, Stephen Tong gives new significance to two underacknowledged drivers of reform: ecclesiology and liturgy. Edwardian reformers caused a sensation in England by engaging with these questions, which spilled over into Ireland, and continued to cast a shadow over subsequent generations of the English Protestants.