Eve Salisbury - Böcker

Situated within a larger discourse on childhood, Ages of Man theories, and debates about the status of the child in the late fourteenth century, Chaucer’s literary children—from infant to adolescent—offer a means by which to hear the voices of youth not prominently treated in social history.

Exploring medical writing in England in the 100+ years after the advent of the “Great Mortality”, this book examines the storytelling practices of poets, patients, and physicians in the midst of a medieval public health crisis and demonstrates how literary narratives enable us to see a kinship between poetry and the healing arts.Looking at how we can learn to diagnose a text as if we were diagnosing a body, Salisbury provides new insights into how we can recuperate the voices of those afflicted by illness in medieval texts when we have no direct testimony. She considers how we interpret stories told by patients in narratives mediated by others, ways that women factor into the shaping of a medical canon, how medical writing intersects with religious belief and memorial practices governed by the Church, and ways that regimens of health benefit a population in the throes of an epidemic.

Exploring medical writing in England in the 100+ years after the advent of the “Great Mortality”, this book examines the storytelling practices of poets, patients, and physicians in the midst of a medieval public health crisis and demonstrates how literary narratives enable us to see a kinship between poetry and the healing arts.Looking at how we can learn to diagnose a text as if we were diagnosing a body, Salisbury provides new insights into how we can recuperate the voices of those afflicted by illness in medieval texts when we have no direct testimony. She considers how we interpret stories told by patients in narratives mediated by others, ways that women factor into the shaping of a medical canon, how medical writing intersects with religious belief and memorial practices governed by the Church, and ways that regimens of health benefit a population in the throes of an epidemic.

The thirteenth-century and fourteenth-century romances in this volume contain some of the finest imaginative work of what has become known as the Matter of England: late medieval, non-Arthurian romances largely dealing with English subjects and locales. Partly based on the English oral folk culture that survived the Norman Conquest, yet anchored in Continental poetic genres and bearing signs of poetic influence from both traditions, they also reflect the blend of English and French literature and culture that defines Anglo-Norman literature’s unique character. Together these tales, each accompanied by an introduction and detailed notes, provide readers with a cohesive study of medieval English romances’s key themes: knightly adventure paired with romantic love, engaging social realism mixed with supernatural events, the disenfranchised hero’s valorous deeds abroad and triumphant return from exile, and an ending that rewards him with glory, marriage, and his rightful place on the throne.

The disparate texts in this anthology, produced in England between the late thirteenth and the early sixteenth centuries, challenge, and in some cases parody and satirize, the institution of marriage. In so doing, according to the Introduction, they allow us to interrogate the traditional assumptions that shape the idea of the medieval household. The trials of marriage seem to outweigh its joys at times and, as some of these texts suggest, maintaining a sense of humor in the face of what must have been great difficulty could have been no easy task. The texts bridge generic categories. Some are obscure, written by anonymous authors; others are familiar, written by the likes of John Lydgate, John Wyclif, and William Dunbar. Taken together they suggest that, despite the fact that marriage had become a sacrament in the twelfth century and was increasingly recognized by ecclesiastical and secular authorities as a valuable social institution, it was not always a stabilizing and orderly social force.

Lybeaus Desconus (the Fair Unknown) is the mid-fourteenth-century Middle English version of the classic narrative of the handsome and mysterious young outsider who comes to the court of King Arthur to prove himself worthy of joining Arthur's knights. The young knight is tested in a variety of ways, and in the course of this testing he learns both chivalric codes of conduct and the truth of his parentage. Six extant manuscripts of the poem attest to its popularity, placing it in company with Guy of Warwick, Bevis of Hampton, and Sir Isumbras among the most popular of Middle English Romances. The current edition offers readers a chance to compare two manuscript versions of the poem, one preserved in Lambeth MS 306 and the other in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples.