Court Cultures of the Middle Ages and Renaissance – serie

In both past and modern societies the concepts of memory and identity have been inextricably intertwined. Memory, through its power of recollection and reflection, is perceived as a central and necessary pathway for self-discovery, self-expression, and self-knowledge crucial to an understanding of the physical and spiritual world. Memory, in this way, becomes fundamental to identity itself, as it is through the complex process of both group and individual recollection and commemoration that cultural, political, national, religious, and gender identities are not only imagined but constructed, reconstructed, and represented.Taking as its focus this complex interplay of memory and identity in the medieval and early modern European context, this volume of essays presents its findings under five thematic headings: ««The Poetics of Memory and Heroic Identity», «Cultural Memory and National Identities», «Emotional Identities», «Nota Bene: The Craft of Memory and Corrective Instruction» and «Memorialising Protestant Identities in Early Modern England». Contributions examine constructions of memory and identity in such key works as the Old English Soliloquies; the Old Norse kings’ sagas Morkinskinna and Heimskringla; medieval Serbian hagiographies; Havelok the Dane; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess, Troilus and Criseyde and Adam Scriveyn; Elizabethan translations of the Psalms; John Stearne’s Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft; seventeenth-century portraiture. The research presented here offers valuable insights into the centrality of memory to medieval and early modern constructions of political, religious, and national identities and points up future avenues for scholarly investigation.

This book investigates the meanings of the notion of friendship in the Renaissance from two perspectives, philological and philosophical, by observing how the notion was used in a broad spectrum of case studies of Renaissance culture. Each chapter highlights the ways in which authors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (writers, philosophers, philologists, politicians, etc.) appropriated Greek and Latin paradigms of friendship, on the one hand, applying them to understand their own social and political context while, on the other hand, they created new paradigms of friendship in both the public and private spheres. Each chapter develops an argument on the notion of friendship starting from the investigation of a particular context and creating a network of connections between words related to friendship, such as speaking sincerely (parrhēsia), flattery, justice, love, pleasure, good, utility, virtue, good life, and truth, in both the private and public domains. The writers addressed in the various chapters are – with regard to the ancients – Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Plutarch, Cicero and Seneca and – among the moderns – Machiavelli, Montaigne, Thomas More, Erasmus, Juan de Mariana, Feliciano Silvestri, Johannes Caselius, the members of the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft, and the authors of Renaissance emblem books.

This volume explores the process of definition, evolution and representation of the figures of the prince and the condottiero in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy: two roles that often appear as interconnected and, in some cases, are embodied by the same political actor. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach and considering different cultural centres (e.g. Milan, Florence, Naples, Ferrara), the contributions to this book examine different forms and genres through which these key political figures have been portrayed and theorised: historical narratives, political treatises, chivalric romances, historical-epic poetry, and visual and artistic representations. These media overlap in various ways but have been rarely considered through a comparative and unified perspective. This viewpoint helps to highlight the synergies, similarities and specificities of these fields and brings recognition to their contribution to the evolution of political ideologies in the Italian Renaissance.

«This edition is the fruit of Professor Matsumoto’s lifelong devotion to the study of the story of Troy in the Middle Ages, beginning with his edition of the major alliterative poem The Destruction of Troy by John Clerk. As well as articles on the subject, Professor Matsumoto has published invaluable concordances to The Destruction of Troy, The Laud Troy Book and John Lydgate’s massive Troy Book. Given the renewed interest in William Caxton, this excellent edition of The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye makes a valuable contribution to scholarship.»(Thorlac Turville-Petre, Professor Emeritus, University of Nottingham)　The book is about the genealogy of the ancient Greek gods and the legend of Troy.William Caxton, for almost thirty years, led his life as a merchant, a diplomat and a cosmopolitan in Bruges, at that time the most prosperous international center of trade in northern Europe. This book is his translation of Raoul Lefèvre’s French original, as well as being the first printed book in English.The undercurrent throughout the book is an everlasting and universal theme of mankind: «love and war/peace», the human nature of love and the folly of war. Thus, the ancient pagan gods are humanized and modernized in the late Middle Ages. Both Lefèvre and Caxton shared the antiwar sentiments in this book, which consists of the genealogy of the ancient Greek gods in Books I and II and the Troy legend in Book III.This new edition, with an extensive introduction by the editor, makes this text accessible to new audiences.

The thirteen essays in this book, presented in honour of Dr A.V.C. (Carl) Schmidt, are designed to reflect the range of his interests. Dr Schmidt, who was a Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford from 1972 until his retirement in 2011, is best known for his comprehensive four-text edition of Piers Plowman, the fruit of a lifetime’s work on that text. He has also made a major contribution to the study of Chaucer and the medieval English contemplatives, and these authors also find a place in this collection. The essays presented here are intended to build upon the legacy of Carl Schmidt’s exemplary scholarship.

This book is also available as a set, together with Volume II. Please visit www.peterlang.com/view/product/84550Patterns of Patronage in Renaissance Rome is the first full-length study of the life and works of Francesco Sperulo of Camerino (1463–1531). In a remarkable career during which the poet progressed from serving as a soldier of fortune in the service of Cesare Borgia to an Italian bishopric, Sperulo produced a significant body of Latin poetry, here presented in a critical edition for the first time. An impressive array of contemporary figures including Leonardo da Vinci, Isabella d’Este, Raphael and Baldassare Castiglione appear in his verse. By placing his work within the larger historical, literary, political and social context, this study, published in two volumes, sheds light on the role played by neo-Latin poetry at the papal court and documents the impact of classical culture in Rome during the period usually referred to as «the High Renaissance».Volume I reconstructs Sperulo’s life and circle of contacts by placing the poet’s works in chronological order and setting them within the political and social circumstances of their composition. Archival documents scattered across Italy, penitentiary records from the Vatican Archives and a voluminous correspondence with the Duke of Urbino and members of the Varano family of Camerino show that Sperulo was intimately involved in papal politics and intrigue; indeed, he was almost assassinated for his involvement. A selection of this correspondence is included here to supplement the poet’s biography.

This collection offers a range of interdisciplinary viewpoints on the occupation of space and theories of place in Britain and Ireland throughout the medieval and early modern periods. It considers space in both its physical and abstract sense, exploring literature, history, art, manuscript studies, religion, geography and archaeology. The buildings and ruins still occupying our urban and rural spaces bridge the gap between the medieval and the modern; manuscripts and objects hold keys to unlocking the secrets of the past. Focusing on the varied uses of space enriches our understanding of the material culture of the medieval and early modern period. The essays collected here offer astute observations on this theme and generate new insights into areas such as social interaction, cultural memory, sacred space and ideas of time and community.