Published by Medieval Institute Publications

Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

ISSN: 0085-6878

Overview
Volumes

Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (essay collections) and Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (monographs) are sister series originally inspired by themes drawn from the annual International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo. These series provide a home for high‐quality humanities research on topics from the late antique, medieval and early modern periods. Although both series have historically focused on medieval Europe, we have expanded geographically and chronologically to embrace a wider conception of the premodern. We welcome studies addressing a range of topics from the late antique, medieval and early modern periods, and we invite proposals from new and established scholars who employ innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to investigate literary, historical and material sources and explore what it has meant to be human through the ages.

Topics

Book 2022

Living on the Edge

Transgression, Exclusion, and Persecution in the Middle Ages

Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel, Laura Miquel Milian

Volume 83 in this series

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This volume addresses the widespread medieval phenomenon of transgression as both a result of and the cause for the exclusion and persecution of those who were considered different. It is widely accepted that the essence of a manuscript cannot be fully grasped without studying its marginalia. Glosses sit on the margins of the text and clarify it, adding a whole new dimension to it and becoming an inextricable part of its content. Similarly, no society can be fully understood without knowledge of what lies on its margins, for the outliers of any given culture provide us with just as much information as its alleged foundational principles. In a time when the Western world ponders building walls up against perceived threats and frightening differences, this multidisciplinary collection of essays based on original and innovative pieces of research shows that it was mostly through tearing down walls that we learned our way forward.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501514869
ISBN:: 9781501514869
ISBN:: 9781501514883
ISBN:: 9781501521119
Subject:: Cultural Studies
Subject:: Topics in Cultural Studies
Subject:: Society
Subject:: History
Subject:: Historical Periods
Subject:: Medieval History
Publisher:: Medieval Institute Publications

Book Ahead of Publication 2024

Teaching “Beowulf”

Practical Approaches

Larry Swain, Aaron Hostetter

Volume 78 in this series

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Beowulf is by far the most popular text of the medieval world taught in American classrooms, at both the high school and undergraduate levels. More students than ever before wrestle with Grendel in the darkness of Heorot or venture into the dragon’s barrow for gold and glory. This increase of attention and interest in the Old English epic has led to a myriad of new and varying translations of the poem published every year, the production of several mainstream film and television adaptations, and many graphic novel versions. More and more teachers in all sorts of classrooms, with varying degrees of familiarity and training are called upon to bring this ancient poem before their students. This practical guide to teaching Beowulf in the twenty-first century combines scholarly research with pedagogical technique, imparting a picture of how the poem can be taught in contemporary American institutions.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9781501512087
ISBN:: 9781501512087
ISBN:: 9781501517549
ISBN:: 9781501511905
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: 8th-15th Century
Subject:: Literary Genres and Media
Subject:: Poetry
Subject:: Literary History
Publisher:: Medieval Institute Publications

Book 2021

Space, Image, and Reform in Early Modern Art

The Influence of Marcia Hall

Arthur J. DiFuria, Ian Verstegen

Volume 77 in this series

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The essays in Space, Image, and Reform in Early Modern Art build on Marcia Hall’s seminal contributions in several categories crucial for Renaissance studies, especially the spatiality of the church interior, the altarpiece’s facture and affectivity, the notion of artistic style, and the controversy over images in the era of Counter Reform. Accruing the advantage of critical engagement with a single paradigm, this volume better assesses its applicability and range. The book works cumulatively to provide blocks of theoretical and empirical research on issues spanning the function and role of images in their contexts over two centuries. Relating Hall’s investigations of Renaissance art to new fields, Space, Image, and Reform expands the ideas at the center of her work further back in time, further afield, and deeper into familiar topics, thus achieving a cohesion not usually seen in edited volumes honoring a single scholar.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513480
ISBN:: 9781501513480
ISBN:: 9781501513459
ISBN:: 9781501518010
Subject:: Arts
Subject:: Arts, general
Subject:: Periods
Subject:: 16th-17th Century
Subject:: Theology and Religion
Subject:: Reformation Studies
Publisher:: Medieval Institute Publications

Book 2020

The Horse in Premodern European Culture

Anastasija Ropa, Timothy Dawson

Volume 70 in this series

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This volume provides a unique introduction to the most topical issues, advances, and challenges in medieval horse history. Medievalists who have a long-standing interest in horse history, as well as those seeking to widen their understanding of horses in medieval society will find here informed and comprehensive treatment of chapters from disciplines as diverse as archaeology, legal, economic and military history, urban and rural history, art and literature. The themes range from case studies of saddles and bridles, to hippiatric treatises, to the medieval origins of dressage literary studies. It shows the ubiquitous – and often ambiguous – role of the horse in medieval culture, where it was simultaneously a treasured animal and a means of transport, a military machine and a loyal companion. The contributors, many of whom have practical knowledge of horses, are drawn from established and budding scholars working in their areas of expertise.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513787
ISBN:: 9781501513787
ISBN:: 9781501514012
ISBN:: 9781501518188
Subject:: Cultural Studies
Subject:: Topics in Cultural Studies
Subject:: Human-Animal Studies
Subject:: History
Subject:: Historical Periods
Subject:: Medieval History
Subject:: Topics in History
Subject:: Social History
Subject:: Cultural History
Publisher:: Medieval Institute Publications

Book 2019

Polemic and Literature Surrounding the French Wars of Religion

Jeff Kendrick, Katherine S. Maynard

Volume 68 in this series

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Polemic and Literature Surrounding the French Wars of Religion demonstrates that literature and polemic interacted constantly in sixteenth-century France, constructing ideological frameworks that defined the various groups to which individuals belonged and through which they defined their identities. Contributions explore both literary texts (prose, poetry, and theater) and more intentionally polemical texts that fall outside of the traditional literary genres. Engaging the continuous casting and recasting of opposing worldviews, this collection of essays examines literature's use of polemic and polemic's use of literature as seminal intellectual developments stemming from the religious and social turmoil that characterized this period in France.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513510
ISBN:: 9781501513510
ISBN:: 9781501518034
ISBN:: 9781501513428
Subject:: History
Subject:: Historical Periods
Subject:: Medieval History
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Religion
Subject:: Theology and Religion
Subject:: Early Modern Times
Publisher:: Medieval Institute Publications

Book 2019

The Feeling Heart in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Meaning, Embodiment, and Making

Katie Barclay, Bronwyn Reddan

Volume 67 in this series

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The heart is an iconic symbol in the medieval and early modern European world. In addition to being a physical organ, it is a key conceptual device related to emotions, cognition, the self and identity, and the body. The heart is read as a metaphor for human desire and will, and situated in opposition to or alongside reason and cognition. In medieval and early modern Europe, the “feeling heart” – the heart as the site of emotion and emotional practices – informed a broad range of art, literature, music, heraldry, medical texts, and devotional and ritual practices. This multidisciplinary collection brings together art historians, literary scholars, historians, theologians, and musicologists to highlight the range of meanings attached to the symbol of the heart, the relationship between physical and metaphorical representations of the heart, and the uses of the heart in the production of identities and communities in medieval and early modern Europe.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513275
ISBN:: 9781501513275
ISBN:: 9781501513220
ISBN:: 9781501517877
Subject:: Cultural Studies
Subject:: Topics in Cultural Studies
Subject:: Emotions
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Emotion
Publisher:: Medieval Institute Publications

Book 2020

Inscribing Knowledge in the Medieval Book

The Power of Paratexts

Rosalind Brown-Grant, Patrizia Carmassi, Gisela Drossbach, Anne D. Hedeman, Victoria Turner, Iolanda Ventura

Volume 66 in this series

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This collection of essays examines how the paratextual apparatus of medieval manuscripts both inscribes and expresses power relations between the producers and consumers of knowledge in this important period of intellectual history. It seeks to define which paratextual features – annotations, commentaries, corrections, glosses, images, prologues, rubrics, and titles – are common to manuscripts from different branches of medieval knowledge and how they function in any particular discipline. It reveals how these visual expressions of power that organize and compile thought on the written page are consciously applied, negotiated or resisted by authors, scribes, artists, patrons and readers. This collection, which brings together scholars from the history of the book, law, science, medicine, literature, art, philosophy and music, interrogates the role played by paratexts in establishing authority, constructing bodies of knowledge, promoting education, shaping reader response, and preserving or subverting tradition in medieval manuscript culture.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513329
ISBN:: 9781501513329
ISBN:: 9781501517884
ISBN:: 9781501513114
Subject:: History
Subject:: Topics in History
Subject:: Cultural History
Subject:: Library and Information Science, Book Studies
Subject:: Book History
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: 8th-15th Century
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Knowledge
Publisher:: Medieval Institute Publications

Book 2019

Blind Spots of Knowledge in Shakespeare and His World

A Conversation

Subha Mukherji

Volume 65 in this series

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A "blind spot" suggests an obstructed view, or partisan perception, or a localized lack of understanding. Just as the brain "reads" the "blind spot" of the visual field by a curious process of readjustment, Shakespearean drama disorients us with moments of unmastered and unmasterable knowledge, recasting the way we see, know and think about knowing. Focusing on such moments of apparent obscurity, this volume puts methods and motives of knowing under the spotlight, and responds both to inscribed acts of blind-sighting, and to the text or action blind-sighting the reader or spectator. While tracing the hermeneutic yield of such occlusion is its main conceptual aim, it also embodies a methodological innovation: structured as an internal dialogue, it aims to capture, and stake out a place for, a processive intellectual energy that enables a distinctive way of knowing in academic life; and to translate a sense of intellectual "community" into print.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110661996
ISBN:: 9783110661996
ISBN:: 9783110660449
ISBN:: 9781580443654
Subject:: History
Subject:: Historical Periods
Subject:: Medieval History
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Publisher:: Medieval Institute Publications

Book 2019

The Shapes of Early English Poetry

Style, Form, History

Eric Weiskott, Irina Dumitrescu

Volume 64 in this series

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This volume contributes to the study of early English poetics. In these essays, several related approaches and fields of study radiate outward from poetics, including stylistics, literary history, word studies, gender studies, metrics, and textual criticism. By combining and redirecting these traditional scholarly methods, as well as exploring newer ones such as object-oriented ontology and sound studies, these essays demonstrate how poetry responds to its intellectual, literary, and material contexts.

The contributors propose to connect the small (syllables, words, and phrases) to the large (histories, emotions, faiths, secrets). In doing so, they attempt to work magic on the texts they consider: turning an ordinary word into something strange and new, or demonstrating texture, difference, and horizontality where previous eyes had perceived only smoothness, sameness, and verticality.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781580443609
ISBN:: 9781580443609
ISBN:: 9783110626605
ISBN:: 9781580443593
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: 8th-15th Century
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Poetics
Publisher:: Medieval Institute Publications

Book 2019

Inventing Modernity in Medieval European Thought, ca. 1100–ca. 1550

Cary J. Nedermann, Bettina Koch

Volume 63 in this series

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One of the most challenging problems in the history of Western ideas stems from the emergence of Modernity out of the preceding period of the Latin Middle Ages. This volume develops and extends the insights of the noted scholar Thomas M. Izbicki into the so-called medieval/modern divide. The contributors include a wide array of eminent international scholars from the fields of History, Theology, Philosophy, and Political Science, all of whom explore how medieval ideas framed and shaped the thought of later centuries. This sometimes involved the evolution of intellectual principles associated with the definition and imposition of religious orthodoxy. Also addressed is the Great Schism in the Roman Church that set into question the foundations of ecclesiology. In the same era, philosophical and theoretical innovations reexamined conventional beliefs about metaphysics, epistemology and political life, perhaps best encapsulated by the fifteenth-century philosopher, theologian and political theorist Nicholas of Cusa.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781580443500
ISBN:: 9781580443500
ISBN:: 9783110626674
ISBN:: 9781580443494
Subject:: History
Subject:: Historical Periods
Subject:: Medieval History
Publisher:: Medieval Institute Publications

Book 2018

Memorializing the Middle Classes in Medieval and Renaissance Europe

Anne Leader

Volume 60 in this series

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Offering a broad overview of memorialization practices across Europe and the Mediterranean, this book examines local customs through particular case studies. These essays explore complementary themes through the lens of commemorative art, including social status; personal and corporate identities; the intersections of mercantile, intellectual, and religious attitudes; upward (and downward) mobility; and the cross-cultural exchange.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781580443463
ISBN:: 9781580443463
ISBN:: 9781580443456
ISBN:: 9783110625424
Subject:: Cultural Studies
Subject:: Topics in Cultural Studies
Subject:: Memory
Subject:: History
Subject:: Historical Periods
Subject:: Medieval History
Publisher:: Medieval Institute Publications

Book Ahead of Publication 2023

The Impact of Latin Culture on Medieval and Early Modern Scottish Writing

Alessandra Petrina

Volume 58 in this series

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In the late medieval and early modern periods, native tongues and traditions, including those of Scotland, cohabited and competed with latinitas in fascinating and inventive ways. Scottish latinity had its distinctive stamp, most intriguingly so in its effects upon the literary vernacular and on themes of national identity.

The present book shows how, when viewed through the prism of its latinity, Scottish textuality was distinctive and fecund. The flowering of Scottish writing owed itself to a subtle combination of literary praxis, the ideal of eloquentia and ideological deftness. This combination enabled writers to service a burgeoning national literary tradition, and to transcend the subject matter of nation through fruitful and energetic treatment of issues of universal appeal.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9781580442824
ISBN:: 9781580442824
ISBN:: 9781501512766
Subject:: History
Subject:: Historical Periods
Subject:: Early Modern History
Subject:: Topics in History
Subject:: Social History
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: 8th-15th Century
Subject:: 16th-17th Century
Publisher:: Medieval Institute Publications

Book Ahead of Publication 2023

Saints and Sainthood around the Baltic Sea

Identity, Literacy, and Communication in the Middle Ages

Carsten Selch Jensen, Tracey Sands, Nils Holger Petersen, Kurt Villads Jensen, Tuomas M. S. Lehtonen

Volume 54 in this series

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This volume addresses the history of saints and sainthood in the Middle Ages in the Baltic Region with a special focus on the cult of saints in Russia, Prussia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, and Latvia (more commonly referred to in the Middle Ages as Livonia). The articles cover a wide range of topics, for example the introduction of foreign (and old) saints into new regions, the creation of new local cults of saints in newly Christianized regions, the role of the cult of saints in the creation of political and lay identities, the adaption of the cult of saints in folk poetry, and the potential role of saints in times of war. The articles also address questions of methodology in research on the medieval cult of saints. Chronologically, the articles cover most of the Middle Ages from the Scandinavian Varangians in Rus in the tenth century to the late medieval Northern societies of the late fifteenth century.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9781580443241
ISBN:: 9781580443241
ISBN:: 9781501512865
Subject:: History
Subject:: Historical Periods
Subject:: Medieval History
Subject:: Theology and Religion
Subject:: Medieval Studies
Publisher:: Medieval Institute Publications

Book Ahead of Publication 2024

Authority of Images / Images of Authority

Shaping Political and Cultural Identities in the Pre-Modern World

Karen Fresco

Volume 53 in this series

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Focusing on language's political power, these essays discuss how representation, through language norms, plays and court spectacles, manipulations and adaptations of texts and images, both constitutes and reflects a cultural milieu. The volume brings together various disciplinary approaches, offering a complex appreciation of these questions. While a core of the essays focuses on France, the contributions engage a broad range of geographical contexts, from Byzantium to eastern Germany and England from the early centuries of the Common Era to the seventeenth century, revealing the prevalence and persistence of the key interconnected issues of images and authority.
Contributors: Carla Bozzolo; Philippe Caron; Robert L. A. Clark; Paul Cohen; Thomas Conley; Jean-Philippe Genet; Douglas Kibbee; Gillette Labory; Nicole Pons; Mara R. Wade.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9781580442282
ISBN:: 9781580442282
ISBN:: 9781501512544
Subject:: Arts
Subject:: Periods
Subject:: 8th-15th Century
Publisher:: Medieval Institute Publications