Ce recueil explore les relations mouvantes entre hommes et animaux, aussi bien réels que fantastiques, dans la France médiévale, dans une perspective interdisciplinaire. Les auteurs examinent la façon dont le rapport humain-animal a été imaginé, défini et remodelé dans la pensée, la culture et la production artistique du Moyen Age. La distinction entre l’humain et l’animal, fondamentale dans le texte biblique et la philosophie antique, a été remise en question au cours du XIIe siècle. Ce phénomène transparaît dans la terminologie utilisée pour désigner les animaux, dans leur représentation dans les arts et la littérature, et dans l’évolution de textes fondamentaux comme le Physiologus ou les bestiaires. Les frontières entre le monde humain et animal, fondées sur des critères comme la maîtrise du langage, la capacité à rire ou la responsabilité légale, ont profondément évolué et été remises en cause entre le XIIe et le XVe siècle. This is the first volume that explores the changing relationships between humans and animals, both real and fantastic, in medieval France, from a completely interdisciplinary perspective. The authors examine the way the human-animal rapport was imagined, defined and remodeled in thought, culture and artistic production. The distinction between human and animal, fundamental in the Bible and in Ancient philosophy, was challenged throughout the course of the 12th century. This phenomenon can be traced in changes in the terminology used to designate animals, in their representations in the arts and literature, and in the reworking of fundamental texts such as the Physiologus and the bestiaries. The borders between the human and the animal world, based on criteria such as linguistic ability, the capacity to laugh and even legal responsibility, evolved and were fundamentally reconsidered between the 12th and the 15th century. Irène Fabry-Tehranchi est enseignante en langue et littérature française et médiévale à l’université de Reading. Elle est l’auteur de Texte et images des manuscrits du Merlin et de la Suite Vulgate (XIIIe-XVe s.) (Brepols, 2014). Anna Russakoff est enseignante et co-directrice du département d’Histoire de l’Art à The American University, Paris. Elle est co-éditrice et contributrice de l’ouvrage Jean Pucelle: Innovation and Collaboration in Manuscript Painting (Brepols, 2013).

"Les animaux sont au Moyen Âge l'objet "d'attentions et de réflexions constantes" (J. Le Goff). Domestiqués, ils sont les auxiliaires essentiels de la vie matérielle et économique. Sauvages, ils alimentent l'imaginnaire. Les études sur les animaux au Moyen Âge se sont, ces dernières années, multipliées. Mais un aspect des rapports entre l'homme et l'animal demandait à être approfondi. Celui de "l'animal exemplaire". Comment les animaux furent-ils mis, au Moyen Âge, au service d'un discours didactique et moral ? Quels étaient leurs atouts dans l'économie de la persuasion ? Bref pourquoi une véritable ménagerie fut-elle convoquées quand il s'agissait de convaincre ? Autant de questions auxquelles veut répondre cet ouvrage. Sont interrogés pour cela les anecdotes exemplaires, les vies de saints, les textes encyclopédiques, la scolastique, les recueils de 'Distinctiones' (ou mots clés bibliques commentés) destinés aux prédicateurs, les textes juridiques. L'animal est aussi concrètement montré à l'œuvre, à travers le chat, le singe, l'escargot et le crapaud. Sont ici pris en compte la réalité historique et le rapport effectif, quotidien, entre homme et animal, loin de l'étude d'une symbolique animale détachée de toute historicité. Avec l'ouverture à d'autres cultures et religions, comme l'islam médiéval."

Readers have long been fascinated by the enigmatic figure of M lusine - a beautiful fairy woman cursed to transform into a half-serpent once a week, whose part-monstrous sons are the ancestor of several European noble houses. This study is the first to consider how this romance developed from a local legend to European bestseller, analysing versions in French, German, Castilian, Dutch, and English. It addresses questions on how to study medieval literature from a European perspective, moving beyond national canons, and reading M lusine's bodily mutability as a metaphor for how the romance itself moves and transforms across borders. It also analyses key changes to the romance's content, form, and material presentation - including its images - and traces how the people who produced and consumed this romance shaped its international transmission and spread. The author shows how M lusine's character is adapted within each local context, while also uncovering previously unknown connections between the different branches of this multilingual tradition. Moving beyond established paradigms of separate national traditions, manuscript versus print, and medieval versus Renaissance literature, the book integrates literary analysis with art historical and book historical approaches. LYDIA ZELDENRUST is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York.

This teaching anthology collects texts from the vast archive of medieval Arthurian literature. It includes selections from mainstream canonical authors, such as Geoffrey of Monmouth and Malory, and more peripheral works, such as the Melech Artus (a 12th-century Hebrew text) and the Dutch Morien (featuring a black knight). Characters and authors showcase the diversity of race, religion, gender, and gender orientation of the Arthurian tradition. The anthology and its accompanying website offer a variety of genres, ranging from visual art to historical chronicles and from romance to drama. Arthurian works, while concentrated in England, France, and Wales, are found across medieval Europe, and thus this anthology includes texts from Iceland to Greece. The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Arthurian Literature is ideally suited to teaching: it includes full texts, such as Chrétien de Troyes’ Knight of the Cart, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale, and the anonymous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, for classes that wish to study a whole work in depth; it also includes shorter excerpts of parallel incidents, such as the Uther and Igraine story, so that students can compare a story’s treatment by different authors. Marginal glosses assist students with the Middle English texts, while introductory notes and explanatory footnotes give students necessary background information.

In Melusine’s Footprint: Tracing the Legacy of a Medieval Myth, editors Misty Urban, Deva Kemmis, and Melissa Ridley Elmes offer an invigorating international and interdisciplinary examination of the legendary fairy Melusine. Along with fresh insights into the popular French and German traditions, these essays investigate Melusine’s English, Dutch, Spanish, and Chinese counterparts and explore her roots in philosophy, folklore, and classical myth. Combining approaches from art history, history, alchemy, literature, cultural studies, and medievalism, applying rigorous critical lenses ranging from feminism and comparative literature to film and monster theory, this volume brings Melusine scholarship into the twenty-first century with twenty lively and evocative essays that reassess this powerful figure’s multiple meanings and illuminate her dynamic resonances across cultures and time. Contributors are Anna Casas Aguilar, Jennifer Alberghini, Frederika Bain, Anna-Lisa Baumeister, Albrecht Classen, Chera A. Cole, Tania M. Colwell, Zoë Enstone, Stacey L. Hahn, Deva F. Kemmis, Ana Pairet, Pit Péporté, Simone Pfleger, Caroline Prud’Homme, Melissa Ridley Elmes, Renata Schellenberg, Misty Urban, Angela Jane Weisl, Lydia Zeldenrust, and Zifeng Zhao.

The first comprehensive study of medieval changelings and associated attitudes to the health and care of children in the period. The changeling - a monstrous creature swapped for a human child by malevolent powers - is an enduring image in the popular imagination; dubbing a child a changeling is traditionally understood as a way to justify the often-violent rejection of a disabled or ailing infant. Belief in the reality of changelings is famously attested in Stephen of Bourbon's disapproving thirteenth-century account of rites at the shrine of Saint Guinefort the Holy Greyhound, where sick children were brought to be cured. However, the focus on the St. Guinefort rituals has meant some scholarly neglect of the wealth of other sources of knowledge (including mystery plays and medical texts) and the nuances with which the changeling motif was used in this period. This interdisciplinary study considers the idea of the changeling as a cultural construct through an examination of a broad range of medical, miracle, and imaginative texts, as well as the lives of three more conventional Saints, Stephen, Bartholomew and Lawrence, who, in their infancy, were said to have been replaced by a demonic changeling. The author highlights how people from all walks of life were invested in both creating and experiencing the images, texts and artefacts depicting these changelings, and examines societal tensions regarding infants and children: their health, their care, and their position within the familial unit.

This is the first book dedicated to the medieval ass It appeals to a multi-Audience: interested lay readership; accessible, introductory and undergraduate level book; scholar This book explains how the medieval ass was an arse, an idiot, a violent hot-tempered sexed-up brute that ate the balls of its own male offspring. Conversely, the ass was also a humble, patient, loyal, hard-working Christian animal (marked with a cross) that Christ rode into Jerusalem. These paradoxical qualities are explored in this book and open up a wealth of information on how people in the Middle Ages viewed the ass, not just as a simple beast of burden, but also as a figure to warn and to educate, to expose human failings and praise the divine. Introducing the Medieval Ass reveals medieval attitudes to animals, to people, and to the divine, making it an excellent way to approach medieval cultural and animal studies.