Helen Damico - Böcker

The publication of this volume of essays is a milestone in Old English studies. It is the first collection to examine this literature from a feminist perspective. Although the contributors represent a plurality of approaches and positions, they share a common objective: to reassess women as women, as they actually appear in the laws, in works written by women, and in canonical literature. The essays address, correct, and round out the nineteenth-century Anglo-Saxon critical tradition and begin fresh exploration of the women in Old English literature.The subjects discussed fall into the following broad categories: the historical record; sexuality and folklore; language and difference in characterization and the "deconstructed" stereotype. Contributors include Marijane Osborn; Christine E. Fell; F.T. Wainwright; Pauline Stafford; Frank M. Stenton; Mary P. Richard s and B. Jane Stanfield; Carol J. Clover; Edith Whitehurst Williams; Paul E. Szarmach; Audrey L. Meaney; Helen Damico; Patricia A. Belanoff; L. John Sklute; Paul Beekman Taylor; Alexandra Hennessey Olsen; Joyce Hill; Jane Chance; Alain Renoir; Dolores Warwick Frese; and Anita R. Riedinger.

First published in 1998. Medieval Scholarship: Biographical Studies on the Formation of a Discipline: Volume 2: Literature and Philology is the second volume of three that present Biographies of scholars whose work influenced the study of the Middle Ages and transformed it into the discipline known as Medieval Studies. Volume 2 provides thirty~two accounts of men and women from the sixteenth century to the twentieth who developed medieval philology and literature into a profession. Their subject deals with the languages and literatures of greater Europe from about the seventh century through the fifteenth and includes Celtic, Scandinavian, Germanic, and Romance nations.

Surveying the development of medieval scholarship through biography, this volume contains 23 original essays on scholars whose work shaped medieval historiography for the past 300 years. Their subject was Europe between 500 and 1500, and they labored to define that protean and multinational culture. Each of them pioneered or revolutionized traditional views on fields such as diplomatics (Mabillon); economic, social, and constitutional history (Power, Pirenne, Bloch, Stubbs, Waitz, Whitelock, Maitland); manuscript and archival studies (Delisle, Muratori); Jewish history and the history of Islam and Byzantium (von Grunebaum, Ostrogorsky); symbology and intellectual history (Kantorowicz, Schramm, Smalley); general and cultural history (Gibbon, Adams, Haskins, S nchez-Albornoz); and ecclesiastical history (Bolland, Lea) and the history of magic and science (Thorndike). Some of the scholars pioneered comparative and interdisciplinary studies; all published work that is still essential to our understanding of the past and, more important, the present.

This study explores the art of interpretation in works of history, art, music, and literature from the medieval period. The authors demonstrate that the search for meaning was a primary concern of medieval authors and that the history of medieval thought from Augustine to Aquinas and Ockham illustrates the dialectic of question and answer that is the foundation of hermeneutics. This study is the first to offer a diversity of hermeneutic approaches and themes in the context of medieval works.The study's interdisciplinary approach to the medieval works considered invites analysis from scholars and critics in all areas of medieval studies. The breadth of scope in addressing the art of interpretation in the various disciplines also provides a valuable general introduction to medieval culture.

This study explores the art of interpretation in works of history, art, music, and literature from the medieval period. The authors demonstrate that the search for meaning was a primary concern of medieval authors and that the history of medieval thought from Augustine to Aquinas and Ockham illustrates the dialectic of question and answer that is the foundation of hermeneutics. This study is the first to offer a diversity of hermeneutic approaches and themes in the context of medieval works.The study's interdisciplinary approach to the medieval works considered invites analysis from scholars and critics in all areas of medieval studies. The breadth of scope in addressing the art of interpretation in the various disciplines also provides a valuable general introduction to medieval culture.

While the essays offered in this collection vary in subject, discipline, and methodological approach, they center on the interpretation of the material world, whether that materiality appears in literature, stone, or the artifacts removed from an archaeological dig. The essay deal mainly with the Germanic and Celtic worlds, but incorporate motifs from Eastern Christian and Roman cultures. Contributors address the themes of time in history; societal and ideological change and continuity; iconic style and polysemous textuality; symbolic and representational interpretation; gender-specific economic production; definitions of social and political structures; and social processes of eclecticism and adaptation. Hence the approaches are interdisciplinary, contextual, comparative, and fluid in their integration of texts and images where the text represented is as crucial to the meaning as is the image or object; they therefore represent the study of the material culture of the Anglo-Saxon period at its best. The variety of disciplines represented in the essays and the range of topics covered by the individual scholars give some indication of the enormous scope of the scholarship of Rosemary Cramp, in whose honor this volume was produced. Readers will find that the subjects dealt with resonate with each other in interesting and complex ways. It is an invaluable contribution to scholars of Anglo-Saxon culture and archaeology.

Eighteen essays by some of the most prominent British and North American students of heroic poetry, plus two poems and a bibliography, are gathered here to honor Jess B. Bessinger Jr., whose innovative studies of heroic poetry have instructed a generation of scholars and whose performances of Anglo-Saxon poems are legendary.