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The Roman confrontation and assimilation of Greek literature entailed a scrutiny, critique, and adaptation of generic assumptions. This book considers the ways in which major genres-among them comedy, lyric, elegy, epic, and the novel-were redefined to accommodate Roman concerns and the ways in which gender plays a role in generic definition and authorial self-definition. Both of these areas of research have been important to William S. Anderson throughout his career. This collection of essays by his students helps readers to understand the nature of Roman literary self-definition, as it honors Professor Anderson's own achievements in this field. ... Read more

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This collection of essays by leading experts in manuscript studies sheds new light on ways to approach medieval texts in their manuscript context. Each contribution provides groundbreaking insight into the field of medieval textual culture, demonstrating the various interconnections between medieval material and literary traditions. The contributors’ work aids reconstruction of the period’s writing practices, as contextual factors surrounding the texts provide clues to the ‘manuscript experience’. Topics such as scribal practice and textual providence, glosses, rubrics, page lay-out, and even page ruling, are addressed in a manner illustrative and suggestive of textual practice of the time, while the volume further considers the interface between the manuscript and early textual communities.

Looking at medieval inventories of books no longer extant, and addressing questions such as ownership, reading practices and textual production, Medieval Texts in Context addresses the fundamental interpretative issue of how scribe-editors worked with an eye to their intended audience. An understanding of the world inhabited by the scribal community is made use of to illuminate the rationale behind the manufacture of devotional texts. The combination of approaches to the medieval vernacular manuscript presented in this volume is unique, marking a major, innovative contribution to manuscript studies.

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The essays in this annual English Association volume provide useful examples of how the conventions behind and the expectations evoked by literary modes and genres help to shape what purports to be an entirely essential and/or socially constructed aspect of identity of the 'he', 'she', or 'I' of the literary text. Ranging across materials from Old English Biblical poetry and hagiography to the late Middle English romances and fabliaux, the essays are united by a commitment to a variety of traditional scholarly methodologies. But each examines afresh an important aspect of what it means to be man or women, husband, son, mother, daughter, wife, devotee or love in the context of particular kinds of medieval literary texts.Contributors ANNE MARIE D'ARCY, HUGH MAGENNIS, DAVID SALTER, MARY SWAN, ELAINE TREHARNE, GREG WALKER. ... Read more

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This work examines the social and historical contexts of the influential stories: "The Wood Beyond the World"; "The Lord of the Rings"; and "The Mists of Avalon". It argues that all stories are the product of their historical, political, and cultural moments, and in seeking to prove this conviction the author provides such a context for fantasy itself, situating its roots in the medieval romance form and tracing the form's development. The book provides a revisionary examination of modern fantasy that demonstrates the genre's ongoing political and social relevance even (or especially) in the face of contemporary Western culture's technological reality. ... Read more

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From the postcolonial perspective of the early twenty-first century, the importance of travel literature, for considerations of national and international cultures and identities, has become increasingly apparent. Travel literature in French has, however, received little critical scrutiny. This book contributes to contemporary reassessments of the form in a number of disciplines, focusing specifically on the discourses and contexts of travel in twentieth-century texts written in French. Its scope is interdisciplinary, involving theoretical and generic considerations as well as a historical overview of colonial and postcolonial texts. The book provides essential reading for all students of travel literature in French—and of travel literature in general. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

12th Century Medieval Satire
This book, by Ronald E. Pepin, fills a much needed gap in a field of Medieval history and literature that has long been cast aside (until recently).However, this is not a book that covers the field but rather is a series of micro-studies on individual authors instead of the genre.Thus, it feels more like a series of essays on disparate authors unconnected to each other rather than a cohesive book.This simply means that there is more work to be done by other medieval literature scholars. My central critique with this book is that Pepin makes little attempt, besides a cursory look at each authors influence and motives, to fit the authors into the larger historical environment.Simply put, this is primarily a literary analysis and not a historical one and some sort of hybrid is needed to fully understand the period.

The twelfth century renaissance, as the twelfth century is commonly called after monumental scholarship by Charles Homer Haskins, saw a flourishing of monastic and later larger University schools and an increased exposure to the famous Roman satirist of Juvenal, Horace, and Martius Statius.The intellectuals of this period applied the techniques of the Roman satirists (with decidedly Christian elements of course) against the problems of their day.These satirists primarily attacked clerical abuse, women, changes in school curriculums (increase in the field of logic and vocations instead of the traditional liberal arts), and the abuses and hypocrisy of monastic orders (Cistercians, Templars, etc).The twelfth century saw a great increase in the genre of Satire that influenced the famous 13th century writers, Walter Map, Gerald of Wales, and others.This volume examines in detail Bernard of Morval, Hugh of Orleans ("the Primate"), Walter of Chatillon, and Nigel of Canterbury.

Sadly, not much is known about twelfth century satirist Bernard of Morval except that he wrote De Contemptu Mundi in the 1150s during the reign of his abbot, Peter the Venerable of Cluny. De Contemptu Mundi is an angst ridden satire against the evils of the day (he certainly believes that the Golden Age had past). This was also a very popular text of the Middle Ages since many manuscripts survive. Often Bernard directs the brunt of his attacks against women (a very common form of medieval satire). Pepin concentrates mostly on the style and meaning behind the De contemput mundim, a three thousand hexameter lines divided into three cantos. Bernard seeks to reproach vices and recall from vices (viciorum reprehensio et a viciis revocare). The reflects on two consequences of Man's fall: the sufferings of first sin and the evils he perpetuates as a guilty offspring of Adam and Eve.

Hugh of Orleans Latin lyric poet of the 12th known as "the Primate", by his friends at the University of Paris.Most of his work concentrates on his own misfortune in an unjust and uncaring world.Pepin argues that his work, especially the individuality of his pieces, places him in the tradition of Horace.Most of this chapter is a detailed analysis of Hugh' style with long quoted sections from his work (a great boon considering not all Hugh's satires are translated).

Walter of Chatillon was a 12th-century French writer and theologian more famous for his epics of Alexander than his satire.His satirical poems are biting and Juvenalian in form.Pepin looks at the brief surviving poems and his primary themes and rhetorical devices.Walter concentrates his satire on avarice for in his opinion it was responsible for the debasement of literary education, for the demise of genorsitu for simony and nepotism in the church (pg 93).Walter's descriptions of Rome's depravities are hilarious and vicious.

Nigel of Canterbury The Speculum Stultorum (Mirror of Fools) was written by Nigellus Wireker. Little is known about Nigellus' life except that he lived during the reigns of Henry II and Richard I of England in the second half of the 12th Century and was a monk and a priest at the Christ Church, Canterbury. Nigellus critiques the vanity of excessive ambition of the clergy, their unreasonable quest for worldly knowledge, and the hypocrisy of men in high positions.

Nigellus' story is about Brunellus the Donkey who wants to have a bigger tail. This quest takes him across Europe in search of the medicine needed to make his tail longer (Marble fat, kite milk, wolf fear, flash of light, lark kisses, etc). During his journey he studies at the University of Paris for ten years and learns absolutely nothing except how to say 'Heehaw' which he knew already. After deciding to join a Monastic house, Brunellus critiques all the main oders of the day (Hospitalers, Cistercians, Benedictines, Secular Canons, Moniales, Carthusians, Black Cannons, etc) and in disgust he decides to create his own taking from the other orders only things which please him (great food, comfy clothes).

This is a good beginning analysis of some of the important authors of the time, however, it only adequately fills the void.A MUST read for the Medieval Historian and Medieval Literary Historian since there are no other books that primarily focus on the satirical literature of this period. ... Read more

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Hermann Fischer's lively and original study of Romantic verse narrative traces the origins and development of this poetic form in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.It brings together the longer epic verse tales of Scott, Byron and Southey and the more lyrical forms of Romantic narrative poetry in the revealing but neglected context of the genre and its history.Professor Fischer addresses the question of genre from both theoretical and historical viewpoints. His study illuminates many areas of Romantic literature, including the role of the medieval revival and the decline of neoclassicism, the relative importance of popular and more literary sources, and questions of changing taste and the reading public.This translation, extensively revised and updated, makes Hermann Fischer's acclaimed study available for the first time in English. ... Read more

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The first study to focus on the numerous ancient Greek fables occurringoutside (and predating) the extant fable collections.Divided into three parts, its core is an intertextual analysis of thefunctions of fables and their allusions. Here the author covers many differentauthors and a variety of genres in archaic, classical and Hellenistic GreekLiterature, ranging from lyric to historiography, from Aristotle to Hesiod andfrom Agamemnon to Zopyrus.This analysis is based on a study of both modern and ancient fable theory -the latter having hitherto never been studied in toto, and incorporatingthe Graeco-Roman terminology of the genre.The book's third part is a collection of all texts (and contexts) studied,which greatly facilitates cross-referencing. ... Read more

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This wide-ranging study presents an examination of the extraordinary diversity and range of satirical writing in contemporary Russian literature. Through the close analysis of seminal satirical texts written by five Russian and emigré authors in the 1970s and 1980s, Karen Ryan-Hayes demonstrates that formal and thematic parody is pervasive and that it provides additional levels of meaning in contemporary Russian satire. The author focuses on different subgenres of satire and offers practical criticism on each text. ... Read more

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Best Seller. An exciting approach to reading, writing, and language artsin the middle school. Aimed at motivating students to read and enjoywider varieties of literature and write more. The book providesreproducible and hands-on activity ideas. Also it includesbibliographies for the genres of realistic fiction, Newbery Awardwinners, animal tales, biography, historical fiction, nonfiction, newsreporting/media, mystery, science fiction and fantasy, poetry, andplays. Stimulate your readers and writers to explore more Genres ofLiterature!

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Audiences often measure the success of film adaptations by how faithfully they adhere to their original source material.However, fidelity criticism tells only part of the story of adaptation.For example, the changes made to literary sources in the course of creating their film treatments are often fascinating in terms of what they reveal about the different processes of genre recognition and gender identification in both media, as well as the social, cultural, and historical contexts governing their production and reception.

In Screening Gender, Framing Genre, Peter Dickinson examines the history and theory of films adapted from Canadian literature through the lens of gender studies. Unique in its discussion of a range of different adaptations, including films based on novels, plays, poetry, and Native orature, this study offers new and often provocative readings of works by such well-known Canadian authors as Margaret Atwood, Marie-Claire Blais, and Michael Ondaatje, and by such important Canadian filmmakers as Mireille Dansereau, Claude Jutra, Robert LePage, and Bruce McDonald.Drawing with equal facility from film and gender theory, and revealing a thorough knowledge of both literary and cinematic history, Dickinson has written a lively and engaging study that is sure to resonate with readers curious about the intersection of Canadian cultural production and broader issues of gender and national identity formation.

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This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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A cultural phenomenon and a theme of guidebooks, narratives and commentaries, the 18th-century Grand Tour was constantly re-worked and subject to variations. Equally, the author remarks that any "genre" of travel literature of this time would be protean in the extreme, but the writings of Joseph Addison, whose "Spectator" held sway over this epoch, would have to be the source of many of the recurrent features to be found in narratives written by novice writers in unfamiliar countries. This text explores the travel writing of the 18th century, examining the shift in the perceptions of tourists that can be seen by the time of Wordsworth and Stendhal, writing 100 years after Addison. By the beginning of the 19th century, travel "for pleasure" rather than to learn about the country visited became the norm, with a view to a growing hedonistic pleasure that had evolved through Romanticism. ... Read more

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In this exciting new work, Carmen Trammell Skaggs examines the discourse of opera--both the art form and the social institution--in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American literature. Through the lens of opera, she maintains, major American writers--including Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, Louisa May Alcott, Kate Chopin, Willa Cather, Henry James, and Edith Wharton--captured the transformations of a rapidly changing American literary landscape. Although they turned to opera for different reasons, they all saw a twofold function in the art form: a means of expressing a private aesthetic experience and a space in which to perform highly ritualized social functions.

Skaggs opens with an exploration of Whitman, who believed that the opera singer infuses ordinary speech with an element of the divine. Through his poetry, he sought to transform these sacred intonations into vehicles of an artistic transcendence that could be experienced by his audience. Skaggs then turns to Poe and Alcott, who frequently imitated the excesses of opera in their fiction, flamboyantly enjoying the element of the absurd. Using opera as a setting in their work allowed them to explore the fallibility of human sensibility, especially our susceptibility to deception.

Chopin and Cather, Skaggs shows, empowered their heroines with a voice, a medium for artistic transcendence, but they were also influenced by the growing popularity of Wagnerian opera--and of the idea that only through a sublimation of life can transfiguration of the soul occur. The true artist, they believed, inevitably lived a solitary life, sacrificing all for art. In the diva, for instance, Cather saw the ideal embodiment of the female artist. On the other hand, James and Wharton, Skaggs explains, recognized the opera box as the ideal setting for social considerations of class, codes, and customs in many of their stories and novels.

In the past, literary critics have employed musical terminology to evoke what opera historian Herbert Lindenberger describes as a "nonverbal dimension beyond what we ordinarily take to be the realm of literature," but many of these same scholars warily embraced an operatic approach. After all, the "operatic" often suggests artificiality and extravagance--qualities usually seen as negative in writing. Despite the undisputed canonical status of many of the works Skaggs explores, at least a few of them might also be described in similarly operatic (and disparaging) terms. The critical discourse of opera, however, offers an ideal vehicle for opening these texts in a new way.

Unveiling a heretofore seldom-noticed connection between the rise of opera in America and the flowering of American literature, Skaggs's noteworthy study will inform and enlighten literary scholars, musicologists, and lovers of both opera and literature.

... Read more