Open Journals @ UWA (The University of Western Australia)
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Review: Remembering the Crusades and Crusading
No full textMegan Cassidy-Welch, ed., Remembering the Crusades and Crusading (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016). Print, 252 pp., £33.99, ISBN: 9781138811157
Review: The Integrated Self: Augustine, the Bible, and Ancient Thought
No full textBrian Stock, The Integrated Self: Augustine, the Bible, and Ancient Thought. (Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017). Print, 280 pages, £52.00, ISBN: 9780812248715
Review: Shakespeare's Settings and a Sense of Place
No full textRalph Berry, Shakespeare's Settings and a Sense of Place (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2016). Print, 144 pp., US$30.00, ISBN: 9781783168088
Review: The Knight, the Cross, and the Song: Crusade Propaganda and Chivalric Literature, 1100-1400
No full textStefan Vander Elst, The Knight, the Cross, and the Song: Crusade Propaganda and Chivalric Literature, 1100-1400. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press). Print, 299 pages, US$55.00, ISBN: 9780812248968
Signs of Prayer in The Dream of the Rood
Get PDFThe Dream of the Rood is poem about the mental and emotional processes that underlie the experience of prayer. The poem explores how words and signs form an interface between God and the human mind. As such, they are able to transform mental and emotional states. The poet does this, I argue, using two literary tropes. The first is the setting, in the middle of the night, which is a familiar setting for private prayer in Anglo-Saxon narrative sources. The second is through the figure of the cross, which represents Christ as the 'word of God' who, in prayer, gives words to the solitary mystic. The patterns of transformation seen in The Dream of the Rood - from fear and passivity to joy and expressiveness - follow a pattern that is also found in many accounts of nocturnal prayer, particularly in the Anglo-Latin poem De Abbatibus and in Felix's Life of Guthlac, as well as in Bede's writings. In each of these accounts, true prayer is a response to signs of God's presence
Review: Clare of Assisi and the Thirteenth-Century Church: Religious Women, Rules, and Resistance
No full textCatherine M. Mooney, Clare of Assisi and the Thirteenth-Century Church: Religious Women, Rules, and Resistance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). Print, 312 pp., US$65.00, ISBN: 9780812248173
Listening to the Gaoler's Daughter
Get PDFIn this essay, I explore the concept of madness in relation to the Gaoler's Daughter in Two Noble Kinsmen. By examining her supposed madness in the context of music and disordered vocality expressed through song; in light of the idea that one might talk oneself out of the suffering of emotional trauma to wellness; and in terms of her social class, I offer a new interpretation of the character’s behavior with the framework that her music is not mad, but rather an early-modern kind of mixtape, or specifically ordered collection of songs, that she uses both as a means of communication with others and as a device to work through her emotions and find resolution to her situation
'Cast Thy Burden upon the Lord, and He Shall Sustain Thee': Consolatory Letter-practices at the Muscovy Tzar Court (second half of the seventeenth century)
No full textThe second half of the seventeenth century in Muscowy witnessed dramatic changes in culture and society. With secular sphere slowly gaining its power, religious no longer played a solely dominant role in people's lives. The court culture was the first to embrace new tendencies and practices, with epistolary etiquette being one of them. In his consolatory letters a court poet Simeon Polotsky acted both as a clergyman and as a lay person. While drawing upon old Russian literary tradition ofconsolatory discourse, examples of which are found in metropolites' archives, at the same time Simeon introduces a completely new to the Moscow tzar court type of letter – a letter as a token of social interaction and structure.
Mercantile Arithmetic in Renaissance Italy: A Translation and Study of a Vernacular Abbaco Work
No full textThis essay is a study of a Renaissance Italian manuscript which has been published under the title of Arte giamata Aresmetica (“The Art called Arithmetic”). This represents a type of mathematical texts called Libri d’abbaco or “abbacus books”, which were produced in large numbers during the period of the Italian Renaissance (13th -16th centuries CE). This paper provides the first translation into English of selected passages and an analysis of the algorithms found in this work. The style of presentation, the vocabulary used, and the mathematical procedures explained in Arte giamata Aresmetica manifest some features that deserve scholarly attention. Though the majority of the mathematical rules mentioned are fairly standard treatments of these subjects not unlike to those found in many other manuscripts written during this period, the uniqueness of this text lies instead in the author’s expository technique, in the sample problems presented, and in its distinctive dialectical terms. Aresmetica is a valuable source for the history of Renaissance business and culture as it gives us the feeling of how merchants operated, the mathematical ability and the mind-set they had to develop, and it provides interesting economic information of that time (prices, products, and various measuring units)
Review: The Books and the Life of Judith of Flanders
No full textDockray-Miller, Mary, The Books and the Life of Judith of Flanders, (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015). Hardback. pp. 176. 36 colour and 5 b&w illustrations. R.R.P. £54.00. ISBN 978-1-4094-6835-6