1,720,985 research outputs found
[Review of] Mercedes Salvador-Bello, _Isidorean Perceptions of Order: the Exeter Book Riddles and Medieval Latin Enigmata_, West Virginia University Press, Morgantown, WV, 2015, 512 pp.
No full textThis article-review discusses of the first book-length investigation into the subtle yet fascinating correlation of Isidorean encyclopaedism and heuristic categories with early medieval riddle tradition. In particular, Salvador-Bello's monograph aims to contextualise the Exeter Book Riddles, the only pre-Conquest English vernacular collection, within the tradition of early medieval Latin riddling in the attempt to solve one of the crucial and yet largely overlooked puzzles posed by this collection, i.e. the compilation process and organizational patterns of its thematic sections. The chief claim of Isidorean Perceptions of Order is that, lying beneath the rather conspicuous idiosyncrasies of the Exeter Book riddle collection, an order is indeed detectable and it is one of a distinctively Isidorean brand, in that the Exeter Riddles fundamentally adhere to the thematic and structural criteria established by the major late antique and early medieval Latin riddle collections and ultimately derived from the encyclopaedic tradition, in general, and from the most influential encyclopaedia of all, Isidore’s Etymologiae, in particular
"‘I’ is for Isidore: Isidore of Seville and Early English Poetry"
No full textThis paper discusses the impact of Isidore and his pan-grammatical system on the poetry of early medieval England, considered in its bilingual dimension. In particular, the analysis focuses on two genres of poetry, the elegy and the riddle tradition, and on the two Isidorean texts which had the most impact on them: the Synonyma and the Etymologiae. The essay will show that the logocentric view of the world which ultimately runs through all early English literary culture owes much to Isidore’s pan-grammatical system and to the distinctively Isidorean fascination with linguistic detail
Translating the Fate of the Soul in Late Anglo-Saxon England: Ælfric of Eynsham and Two Post-Mortem Visions
No full textThis essay discusses what is possibly the earliest translation from the Vitas Patrum corpus into a Western European vernacular, i.e. the Old English version of two visions of departing souls from the Verba Seniorum by Ælfric of Eynsham. Contrary to received notions, Ælfric favoured the narratives of the Desert Fathers as sources for paradigms of clerical celibacy and continence, two of the values that he was most anxious to teach and on which he took a strongly reformist stance. The two case studies presented aim to shed new light on the diffusion and appreciation of the Desert Fathers tales in Benedictine Reform England, in that they will show that, not unlike many anonymous homilists, Ælfric too drew on them as eschatological sources to conjure up two dramatic post-mortem scenes
Italian Translations of Beowulf
No full textIl saggio prende in esame criticamente le traduzioni italiane del Beowulf, analizzando i vari aspetti che le caratterizzano e confrontandole sia tra loro che con il testo anglosassone
'Preface' al volume Hagiography in Anglo-Saxon Egland
No full textThe Preface to the volume Hagiography in Anglo-Saxon England: Adopting and Adapting Saints’ Lives into Old English Prose describes the contents of the essays within the aims of the larger project on Anglo-Saxon and early Middle English hagiograph
Hagiography in Anglo-Saxon England: Adopting and Adapting Saints’ Lives into Old English Prose (Textes et Études du Moyen Âge, 73)
No full textThis volume gathers fourteen new essays devoted to Old English prose saints’ lives from the late Anglo-Saxon period. Moving from diverse methodological approaches and building on the most recent developments in primary and secondary scholarship, the contributions comprehensively consider the texts and contexts of the vernacular hagiographic output both by Ælfric, the major hagiographer of his day, and by anonymous authors. Attention is devoted also to the post-Conquest legacy of Anglo-Saxon hagiography, as Ælfric’s Lives of Saints continued to be read, copied, edited, and readapted throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In the new stress on the Latin source-texts, among which the long-neglected Vitas Patrum, on the historical background underlying the hagiographical production, this collection contributes to define the sanctorale in use in late Anglo-Saxon England and thereby advances our knowledge of the literary culture and intellectual history of the late Anglo-Saxon period and beyond
Rethinking and Recontextualizing Glosses: New Perspectives in the Study of Late Anglo-Saxon Glossography,
No full textIl volume raccoglie 21 contributi dedicati a glosse e glossari composti in Inghilterra (e in Scandinavia), come pure a problematiche specifiche della produzione glossografica medievale, come il rapporto tra lemma e interpretamentum, la portata dell'influsso delle Etymologiae di Isidoro, la tipologia dei glossari, l'impiego di glosse e glossari per l'istruzione privata e la didattic
Preface
No full textThe essays collected in these two volumes provide evidence of Patrizia Lendinara’s wide expertise and her impact in distinct academic fields, ranging from late antiquity to the early and late Middle Ages. The papers are offered as a tribute to Patrizia’s scholarship by colleagues from Italy and abroad, some of whom were once her students. The theme of this Festschrift was chosen in view of the honouree’s keen interest in and contribution to the study of the glosses and the lexicon of Germanic languages. Accordingly, although the essays collected in these volumes vary quite widely in both style and structure, they all ultimately focus on the various facets of glossography and lexicography of the medieval Germanic world
St Andrew in the Old English Homiletic Tradition
No full textSt Andrew the Apostle, seldom cited in the Canonical Gospels, is the main character of a large apocryphal tradition that probably spreads from his topic image as a former fisherman. A recent critical approach by MacDonald even considers the second-century apocryphal books Acta Andreae and Acta Andreae et Mathiae as rewritings of Homer’s epic, with St. Andrew playing the part of a Christian Ulysses (and sometimes of a Christian Socrates). This interpretation has been hardly accepted as a whole, but there is no doubt that St Andrew soon became a legendary character, hero of bizarre adventures of Hellenistic taste. In this paper, I discuss the tradition that gave life to the corpus of Old English homilies related to the cult of St Andrew, focusing on the image of the sea as a common background motif
Studies on Late Antique and Medieval Germanic Glossography and Lexicography in Honour of Patrizia Lendinara
No full textThis is a multilingual two-volume collection assembling 43 contributions on late antique and early medieval Germanic glossography and lexicography by the major experts in the field from Europe and North America. The essays present cutting edge research on a diverse of range of topics concerning the lexicon and the glossographical production in the late antique and early medieval Germanic world with a special emphasis on the relationship between the latter and the legacy of the classical world. The volumes are complemented with a very useful set of indexes (index of manuscripts and index of authors and works)
- …
