Research in Medieval Culture - Böcker

The volume represents the second part of Rosenthal's cataloging of historical scholarship on Ricardian, Lancastrian, and Yorkist England, covering categories from political and legal history to social and intellectual history and the arts. As Rosenthal notes in the introduction, its size (1,888 entries for the decade) "hardly gives much support to those who warn us of the imminent demise of the more traditional lines of historical endeavor and inquiry."

This work—a parallel-text edition that contains all four versions of Piers Plowman—constitutes a major enterprise of textual scholarship and will provide for students of Langland a modern equivalent to Skeat's standard edition of 1886. This revised and corrected three-volume set is specifically designed to facilitate study of the parallel text (Volume 1) alongside both the textual notes (Volume 2, part 1) and the commentary/glossary (Volume 2, part 2), and is intended to make the entire edition available to as many students of Langland as possible.

Although it seemed in the mid-1970s that the study of the troubadours and of Occitan literature had reached a sort of zenith, it has since become apparent that this moment was merely a plateau from which an intensive renewal was being launched. In this new bibliographic guide to Occitan and troubadour literature, Robert Taylor provides a definitive survey of the field of Occitan literary studies - from the earliest enigmatic texts to the fifteenth-century works of Occitano-Catalan poet Jordi de Sant Jordi - and treats over two thousand recent books and articles with full annotations. Taylor includes articles on related topics such as practical approaches to the language of the troubadours and the musicology of select troubadour songs, as well as articles situated within sociology, religious history, critical methodology, and psychoanalytical analysis. Each listing offers descriptive comments on the scholarly contribution of each source to Occitan literature, with remarks on striking or controversial content, and numerous cross-references that identify complementary studies and differing opinions. Taylor's painstaking attention to detail and broad knowledge of the field ensure that this guide will become the essential source for Occitan literary studies worldwide.

Giovanni Villani's New Chronicle traces the history of Florence, Italy, and Europe over a vast sweep of time - from the destruction of the Tower of Babel to the outbreak of the Black Death. This final book, which covers one of the most dramatic periods of the early fourteenth century, is a narrative of transformation, of crisis, in which the author, like many of his contemporaries in the mid-fourteenth century, perceives the punishing hand of God. At the same time, this book, composed by Villani as events were unfolding, reveals - in its attention to detail, in its attempted impartiality, in its desire to make sense of events rather than simply document them - the glimmers of a new historical sensibility.

Illustrations and major decoration of sixteen Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, fully described and indexed, are reproduced here in 454 photographs, many for the first time. Manuscripts included are: the Athelstan Psalter, the Harley Psalter, the Bury Psalter, the Paris Psalter, the Boulogne Gospels, the Arenberg Gospels, the Trinity Gospels, the Eadui Codex, Pembroke College MS 301, the Bury Gospels, the Judith of Flanders Gospels (Pierpont Morgan MSS 709 and 708), the Monte Casino Gospel Book, the Hereford Gospels, the Psychomachia of Prudentius, and the Junius Manuscript.