The investigation of language, of how (and what and why) signifiers signify, is prominent in modern critical work, but the questions being asked are by no means new. In Mervelous Signals, Eugene Vance asserts that "there is scarcely a term, practice, or concept in contemporary theory that does not have some rich antecedent in medieval thought." He goes on to illustrate the complexity and depth of medieval speculations about language and literature. Vance's study of the link between the poetics and semiotics of the Middle Ages takes both a critical and a historical view as he brings today's insights to bear on the contemporary perspectives of such works as St. Augustine's Confessions, the Chanson de Roland, Chrätien's Yvain, Aucassin and Nicolette, Spenser's The Faerie Queen, and certain aspects of the works of Dante and Chaucer and of French medieval theater.

Compares the narrative expression of sexual sublimation and perversion in two 18th-century French novels with that in two classical Chinese novels. The works, Julie, ou la nouvelle Heloise and Les Liaisons dangereuses, and The Golden lotus and Dream of the red chamber, were chosen to illustrate a period before significant culture intercourse between the two countries, and because their status as major literary works has raised them above the particular context of their origin. Also available in paper (unseen), $14.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Imagining Iberia in English and Castilian Medieval Romance offers a broad disciplinary, linguistic, and national focus by analyzing the literary depiction of Iberia in two European vernaculars that have rarely been studied together. Emily Houlik-Ritchey employs an innovative comparative methodology that integrates the understudied Castilian literary tradition with English literature. Intentionally departing from the standard “influence and transmission” approach, Imagining Iberia challenges that standard discourse with modes drawn from Neighbor Theory to reveal and navigate the relationships among three selected medieval romance traditions. This welcome volume uncovers an overemphasis in prior scholarship on the relevance of “crusading” agendas in medieval romance, and highlights the shared investments of Christians and Muslims in Iberia’s political, creedal, cultural, and mercantile networks in the Mediterranean world.

He deals with lexical ambiguity and the ambiguity of words-as-words - in which words themselves are taken as objects - offering linguistic, philosophical, and historical perspectives."--BOOK JACKET.

Each of these essays considers the convoluted nature of the transmission process in question, and reconsiders the historical framework that has informed our own reception of it."--BOOK JACKET.

Andersen-Wyman's book undoes most scholarly uses and understandings of De amore by Andreas Capellanus. By offering a reading promoted by the text itself, Andersen-Wyman shows how Andreas undermines the narrative foundations of sacred and secular institutions and renders their power absurd.

Remarkable for its scope and erudition, Jorge Arditi's new study offers a fascinating history of mores from the High Middle Ages to the Enlightenment. Drawing on the pioneering ideas of Norbert Elias, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Bourdieu, Arditi examines the relationship between power and social practices and traces how power changes over time. Analyzing courtesy manuals and etiquette books from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century, Arditi shows how the dominant classes of a society were able to create a system of social relations and put it into operation. The result was an infrastructure in which these classes could successfully exert power. He explores how the ecclesiastical authorities of the Middle Ages, the monarchies from the fifteenth through the seventeenth century, and the aristocracies during the early stages of modernity all forged their own codes of manners within the confines of another, dominant order. Arditi goes on to describe how each of these different groups, through the sustained deployment of their own forms of relating with one another, gradually moved into a position of dominance.