Envisaging Heaven in the Middle Ages deals with medieval notions of heaven in theological and mystical writings, in visions of the Otherworld, and in medieval art, poetry and music. It considers the influence of such notions in the secular literature of some of the greatest writers of the period including Chrétien de Troyes and Chaucer. The coherence and beauty of these notions make heaven one of the most impressive medieval ‘cathedrals of the mind’. With contributions from experts such as A.C. Spearing, Peter Meredith, Peter Dronke and Robin Kirkpatrick, this collection is essential reading for all those interested in medieval religion and culture.

A comprehensive, innovative study of how medieval people envisioned heaven, hell, and purgatory - images and imaginings that endure today.

Gender and Exemplarity in Medieval and Early Modern Spain gathers a series of studies on the interplay between gender, sanctity and exemplarity in regard to literary production in the Iberian peninsula. The first section examines how women were con¬strued as saintly examples through narratives, mostly composed by male writers; the second focuses on the use made of exemplary life-accounts by women writers in order to fashion their own social identity and their role as authors. The volume includes studies on relevant models (Mary Magdalen, Virgin Mary, living saints), means of transmission, sponsorship and agency (reading circles, print, patronage), and female writers (Leonor López de Córdoba, Isabel de Villena, Teresa of Ávila) involved in creating textual exemplars for women. Contributors are: Pablo Acosta-García, Andrew M. Beresford, Jimena Gamba Corradine, Ryan D. Giles, María Morrás, Lesley K. Twomey, Roa Vidal Doval, and Christopher van Ginhoven Rey.

A collection of essays which show how early drama traditions were transformed, recycled, re-used and reformed across time to form new relationships with their audiences. Medieval afterlives brings new insight to the ways in which peoples in the sixteenth century understood, manipulated and responded to the history of their performance spaces, stage technologies, characterisation and popular dramatic tropes. In doing so, this volume advocates for a new understanding of sixteenth-seventeenth century theatre makers as highly aware of the medieval traditions that formed their performance practices, and audiences who recognised and appreciated the recycling of these practices between plays.

Taking a fresh look at the interconnections between medieval images, texts, theater, and practices of viewing, reading and listening, this explicitly interdisciplinary volume explores various manifestations of performance and meanings of performativity in the Middle Ages. The contributors - from their various perspectives as scholars of art history, religion, history, literary studies, theater studies, music and dance - combine their resources to reassess the complexity of expressions and definitions of medieval performance in a variety of different media. Among the topics considered are interconnections between ritual and theater; dynamics of performative readings of illuminated manuscripts, buildings and sculptures; linguistic performances of identity; performative models of medieval spirituality; social and political spectacles encoded in ceremonies; junctures between spatial configurations of the medieval stage and mnemonic practices used for meditation; performances of late medieval music that raise questions about the issues of historicity, authenticity, and historical correctness in performance; and tensions inherent in the very notion of a medieval dance performance.

This book examines the sustained interest in legends of the pagan and peripheral North, tracing and analyzing the use of an ‘out-of-Scandinavia’ legend (Scandinavia as an ancestral homeland) in a wide range of medieval texts from all over Europe, with a focus on the Anglo-Saxon tradition. The pagan North was an imaginative region, which attracted a number of conflicting interpretations. To Christian Europe, the pagan North was an abject Other, but it also symbolized a place from which ancestral strength and energy derived. Rix maps how these discourses informed ‘national’ legends of ancestral origins, showing how an ‘out-of-Scandinavia’ legend can be found in works by several familiar writers including Jordanes, Bede, ‘Fredegar’, Paul the Deacon, Freculph, and Æthelweard. The book investigates how legends of northern warriors were first created in classical texts and since re-calibrated to fit different medieval understandings of identity and ethnicity. Among other things, the ‘out-of-Scandinavia’ tale was exploited to promote a legacy of ‘barbarian’ vigor that could withstand the negative cultural effects of Roman civilization. This volume employs a variety of perspectives cutting across the disciplines of poetry, history, rhetoric, linguistics, and archaeology. After years of intense critical interest in medieval attitudes towards the classical world, Africa, and the East, this first book-length study of ‘the North’ will inspire new debates and repositionings in medieval studies.

Essays; medieval romance; Arthurian Iiterature; Elizabeth Archibald.