'Matthew Bailey's work on medieval Hispanic epic poetry is most impressive. It is a unique contribution to our knowledge of the Old Spanish epic and offers a highly original advance in its field. This book will, of course, primarily be of interest to Hispano-Medievalists, but given its enlightened and far-reaching views - based on very wide reading - it will also be of significant interest to all medievalists and folklorists, regardless-of specialty'-Samuel Armistead, Department of Spanish, University of California, Davis The Poetics of Speech in the Medieval Spanish Epic explores the composition of manuscript texts in thirteenth-century Spain. Of the vernacular epic poems originating with the minstrels of this era, only three full-length works remain: Cantar de Mio Cid, Poema de Fernßn Gonzßlez, and Mocedades de Rodrigo, all preserved and recorded by members of the clergy. By analysing expressive traits found in these three poems, Matthew Bailey links them to the cognitive processes that take place in the minds of speakers as narration unfolds. In Latin and other vernacular texts from the same period, authors identify their sources as oral, describe oral compositional techniques, and detail modes of processing texts in medieval monastic environments. Using the information provided by these details, as well as a close technical reading of the three epic poems, Bailey incorporates the methodologies and concepts of discourse analysis in an examination of expression in the Spanish epic and points convincingly to oral composition as the initial step in text creation for the period.

These volumes contain selected papers from the Second International Conference on Contrastive Semantics and Pragmatics that was held at Newnham College, University of Cambridge, in September 2000. They include papers on negation, temporality, modality, evidentiality, eventualities, grammar and conceptualization, grammaticalization, metaphor, cross-cultural pragmatics and speech acts and the semantics-pragmatics boundary. There are contributions by, amongst many others, Les Bruce, Ilinca Crainiceanu, Thorstein Fretheim, Saeko Fukushima, Ronald Geluykens, Javier Gutierrez-Rexach, Klaus von Heusinger, K. M. Jaszczolt, Susumu Kubo, Akiko Kurosawa, Eva Lavric, Didier Maillat, Marta Maleczki, Steve Nicolle, Sergei Tatevosov, L. M. Tovena, Jacqueline Visconti and Krista Vogelberg.

New examinations of the figure of Charlemagne in Spanish literature and culture.

This volume brings together a number of distinguished scholars in the field of Poema de mio Cid studies. It provides an informed introduction to key literary aspects of the poem, and thoroughly examines many of the complex issues that are crucial for a comprehensive understanding of the work (historical context, ideological motivations, prosification in medieval chronicles, the poem’s place in the canon of Spanish literature). Equally important are the new findings that have been put forward since the 1970s, when scholars started to challenge Ramón Menéndez Pidal’s theories that had dominated the philological discourse since the beginning of the twentieth century. Contributors are Matthew Bailey, Simon Barton, Francisco Bautista, Juan Carlos Bayo Julve, Federico Corriente, Leonardo Funes, Luis Galván, Fernando Gómez Redondo, Eukene Lacarra Lanz, Salvatore Luongo, Georges Martin, Alberto Montaner, Javier Rodríguez Molina, Mercedes Vaquero, Roger Wright, and Irene Zaderenko.

This book presents an original perspective on the variety and intensity of biblical narrative and rhetoric in the evolution of history writing in León-Castile during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It focuses on six Hispano-Latin chronicles, two of which make unusually overt and emphatic use of biblical texts. Of particular importance is the part played by the influence of exegesis that became integral to scriptural and liturgical influence, both in and beyond monastic institutions. Alun Williams provides close analysis of the text and comparisons with biblical typology to demonstrate how these historians from the north of Iberia were variously dependent on a growing corpus of patristic and early medieval interpretation to understand and define their world and their sense of place. Narrative, Piety and Polemic in Medieval Spain sees Williams examine this material as part of a comparative exploration of language and religious allusion, showing how the authors used these biblical-liturgical elements to convey historical context, purpose and interpretation.

One of the most powerful and sustained works in all medieval literature, without which no series could be considered complete. The Poem of My Cid deals with the exploits of the medieval Castilian warrior, beginning with the sorrow of his departure into exile and focusing on his determination to regain the favour of his king.

Spoken Word and Social Practice: Orality in Europe (1400-1700) addresses historians and literary scholars. It aims to recapture oral culture in a variety of literary and non-literary sources, tracking the echo of women’s voices, on trial, or bantering and gossiping in literary works, and recapturing those of princes and magistrates, townsmen, villagers, mariners, bandits, and songsmiths. Almost all medieval and early modern writing was marked by the oral. Spoken words and turns of phrase are bedded in writings, and the mental habits of a speaking world shaped texts. Writing also shaped speech; the oral and the written zones had a porous, busy boundary. Cross-border traffic is central to this study, as is the power, range, utility, and suppleness of speech. Contributors are Matthias Bähr, Richard Blakemore, Michael Braddick, Rosanna Cantavella, Thomas V. Cohen, Gillian Colclough, Jan Dumolyn, Susana Gala Pellicer, Jelle Haemers, Marcus Harmes, Elizabeth Horodowich, Carolina Losada, Virginia Reinburg, Anne Regent-Susini, Joseph T. Snow, Sonia Suman, Lesley K. Twomey and Liv Helene Willumsen.