Alastair J. Minnis – författare

This anthology of texts in translation, here presented in a fully revised and updated form, covers the single most important branch of medieval literary theory and criticism, the commentary tradition, in one of the most significant periods of its development. The majority of the texts are here translated for the first time; most of the translations have been prepared specially for this edition. They offer discussion of such topics as fiction and fable (in classical poetry and in the Bible); the ethical effects and purpose of literature; authorship and authority; the function of biography in literary interpretation; stylistic and didactic modes of writing; literary form and structure; allegory and literal-historical sense; symbolism; imagination and imagery; the semiotics of words and things, the moralization of classical texts; the status of poetry within the hierarchy of the human arts and sciences; and the prestige and purpose of vernacular literature. The selections are fully annotated and provided with introductions which form a linked series of essays towards the history of medieval literary theory and criticism.

The Roman de la Rose was a major bestseller - largely due to its robust treatment of 'natural' sexuality. This study concentrates on the ways in which Jean de Meun, in imitation of Ovid, assumed the mock-magisterium (or mastership) of love.From Latin texts and literary theory Jean derived many hermeneutic rationales and generic categorizations, without allowing any one to dominate. Alastair J. Minnis considers allegorical versus literalistic expression in the poem, its competing discourses of allegorical covering and satiric stripping, Jean's provocative use of plain and sometimes obscene language in a widely accessible French work, the challenge of its homosocial and perhaps even homoerotic constructions, the subversive effects of coital comedy within a text characterized by intermittent aspirations to moral and scientific truth, and - placing the Rose's reception within the European history of vernacular hermeneutics - the problematic translation of literary authority from Latin into the vulgar tongue.

Professor Minnis argues that the paganism in Troilus and Criseyde and The Knight's Taleis not simply a backdrop but must be central to our understanding of the texts. Chaucer's two great pagan poems, Troilus and Criseyde and The Knight's Tale, belong to the literary genre known as the `romance of antiquity' (which first appeard in the mid 12th century), in which the ancient pagan world is shown on its own terms, without the blatant Christian bias against paganism characteristic of works like the Chanson de Roland, where the writer is concerned with present-day rather than classical forms of paganism. Chaucer's attitudes to antiquity were influenced, but not determined, by those found in the compilations, commentaries, mythographies and history books which we know that he knew. These sources illuminate the manner in which he transformed Boccaccio. Much modern criticism has concentrated on the medieval veneer of manners and fashions which are ascribed to the heathen protagonists of Troilus and The Knight's Tale; Dr Minnis examines the other side of the coin, Chaucer's historical interest in cultures very different from his own. The paganism in these poems is not mere background and setting, but an essential part of their overall meaning.

Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.

Chaucer's translation of Boethius' work is related to medieval intellectual culture, with attention to Trevet's Boethius commentary.This collection seeks to locate the Boece within the medievaltradition of the academic study and translation of the Consolatiophilosophiae, thereby relating the work to the intellectual culturewhich made it possible.It begins with the fullest study yet undertakenof the Boethius commentary of Nicholas Trevet, this being a majorsource of the Boece. There follow editions and translationsof the major passages in Trevet's commentary whereNeoplatonic issuesare confronted, then Chaucer's debt to Trevet is assessed in a detailedreview. The many choices which faced Chaucer as a translator are indicated and the Boeceis placed in a long line of interpreters of Boethius in which both Latin commentators and vernacular translators played their parts. Finally, a view is offered of the Boece as anexample of late-medieval `academic translation': if the Boeceis assigned to this genre, it may be judged a considerable success.

11 studies of different types of late-medieval religious literature, in English, French and Latin.This collection of new essays constitutes the proceedings of the sixth York Manuscripts Conference, held at the University of York in July 1991. Dr Doyle's lively introductory address is followed by eleven studies which range widely over the different types and genres of religious literature which were produced in late-medieval England, paying attention to both verse and prose, and representing the three literary languages of the time, English, French andLatin, though concentrating on texts in English.Contributors: IAN DOYLE, BELLA MILLETT, O.S. PICKERING, JOCELYN WOGAN-BROWNE, THOMAS G. DUNCAN, SUE POWELL, RALPH HANNA III, VINCENT GILLESPIE, ANNE HUDSON, ALAN J. FLETCHER, A.S.G. EDWARDS, JOHN J. THOMPSON

New interdisciplinary essays on the treatment of the body in medieval theology.The attitudes towards the human body held by different branches of medieval theology are currently a major focus of scholarly attention. This first volume from York Medieval Press includes studies of the metaphor of man as head and woman as body, Abelard, women and Catharism, the female body as an impediment to ordination, women mystics, and the University of York's 1995 Quodlibet Lecture given by Eamon Duffy on the early iconography and "lives" of St Francis of Assisi.PETER BILLER is Professor of Medieval History at the University of York; A.J. MINNIS is Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of English, Yale Univesrity.Contributors: PETER BILLER, ALCUIN BLAMIRES, DAVID LUSCOMBE, W.G. EAST, A.J. MINNIS, DYAN ELLIOTT, ROSALYNN VOADEN, EAMON DUFFY

Penance and confession were an integral part of medieval religious life; essays explore literary evidence.Penance, confession and their texts (penitential and confessors' manuals) are important topics for an understanding of the middle ages, in relation to a wide range of issues, from medieval social thought to Chaucer's background. These essays treat a variety of different aspects of the topic: subjects include the frequency and character of early medieval penance; the summae and manuals for confessors, and the ways in which these texts (written by males for males) constructed women as sexual in nature; William of Auvergne's remarkable writing on penance; and the relevance of confessors' manuals for demographic history. JOHN BALDWIN's major study `From the Ordeal to Confession', delivered as a Quodlibet lecture, traces the appearance in French romances of the themes of a penitent's contrition, the priest's job in listening, and the application of the spiritual conseil and penitence.PETER BILLER is Professor of Medieval History at the University of York; A.J. MINNIS is Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of English, Yale University.Contributors: PETER BILLER, ROB MEENS, ALEXANDER MURRAY, JACQUELINE MURRAY, LESLEY SMITH, MICHAEL HAREN, JOHN BALDWIN

Essays illuminating Gower's work, the transmission and reception of Gowerian manuscripts and early printings, and his afterlife in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.The fourteenth-century English poet John Gower was acutely aware of the value of words and books in the making of heritage. Judging from the record he left behind - in manuscript and in stone - he focused considerable effort in his later years on shaping how subsequent generations would remember him. The contributors to this volume take Gower's consciousness of posterity's judgment as a starting point for essays on a compelling range of topics: Gower's thoughts on the sublime,his views on peace, his idealisation of marriage, his responses to antecedents ranging from Ovid's love poetry to the pastoral handbook tradition, and his engagements with contemporaries as diverse as Deschamps and Wyclif. Meanwhile, fresh discoveries about manuscripts and early printing history illuminate how posterity actually began to judge the poet.

Material on the production and transmission of medieval literature and the early formation of the canon of English poetry.A wide range of poets is covered - Chaucer, Gower, Hoccleve, the Gawain poet, Langland, and Lydgate, along with the translator of Claudian's De Consulatu Stilichonis. The Turnament of Totenham is read in termsof theory of the carnivalesque and popular culture, and major contributions are made to current linguistic, editorial and codicological controversies. Going beyond the Middle Ages, the book also considers the sixteenth-century reception of Chaucer's Legend of Good Women and Post-Reformation reading of Lydgate. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the production and transmission of medieval literature, and in the early formation of the canon of English poetry.Contributors: JULIA BOFFEY, J.A. BURROW, CHRISTOPHER CANNON, MARTHA DRIVER, SIAN ECHARD, A.S.G. EDWARDS, KATE D. HARRIS, S.S. HUSSEY, KATHRYN KERBY-FULTON, CAROL M. MEALE, LINNE R. MOONEY, CHARLOTTE C. MORSE, V.I.J. SCATTERGOOD, ELIZABETH SOLOPOVA, ESTELLE STUBBS, JOHN THOMPSON.