Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
The theme of the body and soul' relationship in medieval texts and modern reworkings.
The theme of the body-and-soul relationship in medieval texts and in modern reworkings of medieval matter is explored in the articles here, specifically the representation of the body in romance; the relevance of bawdy tales to the cultural experience of authors and readers in the middle ages; the function of despair, or melancholy, in medieval and Renaissance literature; and the political significance of late medieval representations of bodies' in the chroniclers' accounts of the Rising and in Gower's poems. Two articles are devoted to modern retellings of medieval themes: John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, seen in relation to the traditional acta martyrum, and the medieval revival in Tory Britain exemplified in Douglas Oliver's The Infant and the Pearl.
Contributors: PAMELA JOSEPH BENSON, NIGEL S. THOMPSON, JON WHITMAN, JEROME MANDEL, BARBARA NOLAN, YASUNARI TAKADA, YVETTE MARCHAND, ROBERT F. YEAGER, JOERG O. FICHTE, JOHN KERRIGAN
Synopsis
The theme of the body-and-soul relationship in medieval texts and in modern reworkings of medieval matter is explored in the articles here, specifically the representation of the body in romance; the relevance of bawdy tales to the cultural experience of authors and readers in the middle ages; the function of despair, or melancholy, in medieval and Renaissance literature; and the political significance of late medieval representations of bodies' in the chroniclers' accounts of the Rising and in Gower's poems. Two articles are devoted to modern retellings of medieval themes: John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, seen in relation to the traditional acta martyrum, and the medieval revival in Tory Britain exemplified in Douglas Oliver's The Infant and the Pearl. Contributors: PAMELA JOSEPH BENSON, NIGEL S. THOMPSON, JON WHITMAN, JEROME MANDEL, BARBARA NOLAN, YASUNARI TAKADA, YVETTE MARCHAND, ROBERT F. YEAGER, JOERG O. FICHTE, JOHN KERRIGAN
Table of Contents
Gualdrada's two bodies: female and civic virtue in medieval Florence / Pamela Joseph Benson -- Man's flesh and woman's spirit in the Decameron and the Canterbury tales / N.S. Thompson -- The body and the struggle for the soul of romance: La queste del saint graal / Jon Whitman -- "Polymorphous sexualities" in Chrâetien de Troyes and Sir Thomas Malory / Jerome Mandel -- Promiscuous fictions: medieval bawdy tales and their textual liaisons / Barbara Nolan -- "Commune profit" and libidinal dissemination in Chaucer / Yasunari Takada -- Towards a psychosomatic view of human nature: Chaucer, Spenser, Burton / Yvette Marie Marchand -- The body politic and the politics of bodies in the poetry of John Gower / Robert F. Yeager -- Foxe's Acts and monuments: the spirit's triumph over the flesh / Joerg O. Fichte -- Mrs. Thatcher's Pearl / John Kerrigan.