King's College London School of Humanities – förlag

The twin themes of punishment and penance considered through both historical and literary medieval German texts.The supposed brutality of medieval punishment looms large in the popular contemporary imagination, yet this perception can obscure the diverse and nuanced reactions of medieval society to violent or criminal acts. This collectionaddresses the ways in which different approaches to punishment are depicted and discussed in written texts, focusing in particular on the often complex intersection - semantic, theoretical and theological - between punishment andpenitential practices, both self-imposed and imposed by others. Often in dialogue with theoretical approaches (for example, those of René Girard or Michel Foucault), individual essays explore a range of themes: the intersection ofthe literary representation of acts of punishment and penance with historical experience; the ways in which acts of punishment and penance engage the wishes and desires of those inflecting or witnessing them; legal and theological implications; the symbolic and communicative capital of the body. They focus on a range of texts (romance, lyric, mystical writing, saints' lives) written in German, from the twelfth to the sixteenth century.Sarah Bowden is Lecturer in German at King's College London; Annette Volfing is Professor of Medieval German Studies at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Oriel College.Contributors: Sarah Bowden, Björn Buschbeck, Sebastian Coxon, Racha Kirakosian, Andreas Kraß, Henrike Manuwald, Katharina Mertens-Fleury, Jamie Page, Aimut Suerbaum, Annette Volfing.

First full examination of the annotations to Horace found in an early medieval manuscript reveals much about his reception.Horace was a cornerstone of the medieval academic curriculum and a major inspiration for poets writing in Latin and, in due course, in the European vernaculars. Of the abundant commentaries and glosses on his works, those contained in British Library Harley 2724 stand out. This important manuscript of Horace's complete works was compiled in Bavaria at the end of the tenth or the beginning of the eleventh century and it contains copious contemporary annotations. Although its value has long been recognised, this is the first detailed analysis of the scholia on Horace's lyric verse. Paulina Taraskin demonstrates that that the greater part of this annotation differs starkly from ancient and medieval Horace scholia published to date. Unlike schoolroom commentators who focus primarily on expounding the poet's language and literal meaning, the Harley scholiast collects notes on copious subjects - myth, history, geography, ethnography, natural history, etymology etc. - culled from a wide variety of classical and early medieval authorities and commentators. He enjoys narrative, copying extensive extracts verbatim and weaving his own prose from multiple sources. For him, expounding Horace is not an end in itself but a springboard for the accumulation of encyclopaedic wisdom to be used as the basis for further commentaries, compilations or perhaps even literary works.This study of the scholiast's techniques, sources, and possible goals, fully illustrated with copious excerpts, lays the foundations for further work, and will be a valuable source for scholars of the rich medieval commentary tradition not only on Horace but on classical authors generally.PAULINA TARASKIN gained her doctorate from King's College London.