The first published general study of an unduly neglected writer whose stylistic legacy remains unique in the Middle Ages. The well-connected, northern-French monk and musician Gautier de Coinci (1177/8-1236) occupies an unassailable position as one of the most exceptional vernacular writers of the Middle Ages, concerning whom there is nevertheless nofull length study in English. In a meticulously planned and supervised collection of miracles of Our Lady, which survive in a remarkable number of manuscripts, some beautifully illustrated, Gautier deploys his outstanding talentsas a composer of songs, an acerbic satirist, an audacious inventor of rich and equivocal rhymes (of a virtuosity unparalleled before the "Grands Rhetoriqueurs" on the eve of the Renaissance), a confident lexical innovator, an exuberant exponent of rhetorical wordplay, an incisive observer of contemporary society, and a man of profound personal piety. This study of word-patterning in Gautier seeks to compensate for the dearth of stylistic studies ofOld French and to examine in detail the relationship between rhetoric and religion, "courtoisie" and Mariolatry, aristocratic tastes and the way to spiritual renewal. Gautier's writing strategy is shown to be a means to rise beyond secular, aristocratic values by building on them and transcending them rather than opposing and rejecting them. TONY HUNT is a Fellow of St Peter's College, Oxford.

Essays studying the relationship between literariness and form in medieval texts.

Jenny Pearson’s exceptional debut delivers laugh-out-loud calamity, high-stakes adventure, and the warmth of family. Facts are everything to eleven-year-old Freddie Yates: once you know a fact it’s yours to keep. After his grandmother dies and Freddie discovers his biological father might be alive and well in Wales, he decides to follow the facts. Together with his best friends, Ben and Charlie, he sneaks off on the adventure of a lifetime (or at least, the summer holidays) to track down his father. Freddie doesn’t expect any miracles. But when the three unwittingly set off a chain of inexplicable events via an onion-eating competition, a few superhero costumes, and a group of very angry antique thieves, Freddie discovers that some things can’t always be explained—and sometimes what you’re looking for has been with you the whole time. Propulsive and hilarious, The Super Miraculous Journey of Freddie Yates is a heartwarming story about the true meaning of family.

In Lyric Tactics, Ingrid Nelson argues that the lyric poetry of later medieval England is a distinct genre defined not by its poetic features—rhyme, meter, and stanza forms—but by its modes of writing and performance, which are ad hoc, improvisatory, and situational.

A survey of the use of the refrain in thirteenth and fourteenth-century French music and poetry, showing how it was skilfully deployed to assert the validity of the vernacular. The relationship between song quotation and the elevation of French as a literary language that could challenge the cultural authority of Latin is the focus of this book. It approaches this phenomenon through a close examination of the refrain, a short phrase of music and text quoted intertextually across thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century musical and poetic genres. The author draws on a wide range of case studies, from motets, trouvère song, plays, romance, vernacular translations, and proverb collections, to show that medieval composers quoted refrains as vernacular auctoritates; she argues that their appropriation of scholastic, Latinate writing techniques workedto authorize Old French music and poetry as media suitable for the transmission of knowledge. Beginning with an exploration of the quasi-scholastic usage of refrains in anonymous and less familiar clerical contexts, the book goeson to articulate a new framework for understanding the emergence of the first two named authors of vernacular polyphonic music, the cleric-trouvères Adam de la Halle and Guillaume de Machaut. It shows how, by blending their craftwith the writing practices of the universities, composers could use refrain quotation to assert their status as authors with a new self-consciousness, and to position works in the vernacular as worthy of study and interpretation. Jennifer Saltzstein is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Oklahoma.

This unique and exciting collection, inspired by the scholarship of literary critic Stephanie Trigg, offers cutting-edge responses to the writings of Geoffrey Chaucer for the current critical moment. The chapters are linked by the organic and naturally occurring affinities that emerge from Trigg's ongoing legacy; containing diverse methodological approaches and themes, they engage with Chaucer through ecocriticism, medieval literary and historical criticism, and medievalism. The contributors, trailblazing international specialists in their respective fields, honour Trigg's distinctive and energetic mode of enquiry (the symptomatic long history) and intellectual contribution to the humanities. At the same time, their approaches exemplify shifting trends in Chaucer scholarship. Like Chaucer's pilgrims, these scholars speak to and alongside each other, but their essays are also attentive to 'hearing Chaucer speak' then, now and in the future.

In the late middle ages (ca. 1200-1520), both religious and secular people used manuscripts, was regarded as a most precious item. The traces of their use through touching and handling during different rituals such as oath-taking, public reading, and memorializing the dead, is the subject of Kathryn Rudy’s research in Touching Parchment. This second volume, Social Encounters with the Book, delves into the physical interaction with books in various social settings, including education, courtly assemblies, and confraternal gatherings. Looking at acts such as pointing, scratching, and ‘wet-touching’, the author zooms in on smudges and abrasions on medieval manuscripts as testimonials of readers’ interaction with the book and its contents. In so doing, she dissects the function of books in oaths, confraternal groups, education, and courtly settings, illuminating how books were used as teaching aids and tools for conveying political messages. The narrative paints a vivid picture of medieval reading, emphasizing bodily engagement, from page-turning to the intimate act of kissing pages. Overall, this text offers a captivating exploration of the tactile and social dimensions of book use in late medieval Europe broadening our perspective on the role of objects in rituals during the middle ages. Social Encounters with the Book provides a fundamental resource to anybody interested in medieval history and book materiality more widely.