God’s Patients approaches some of Chaucer’s most challenging poems with two philosophical questions in mind: How does action relate to passion, to being-acted-on? And what does it mean to submit one’s will to a law? Responding to critics (Jill Mann, Mark Miller) who have pointed out the subtlety of Chaucer’s approach to such fundamentals of ethics, John Bugbee seeks the source of the subtlety and argues that much of it is ready to hand in a tradition of religious (and what we woul...

Since its founding in 1943, Medievalia et Humanistica has won worldwide recognition as the first scholarly publication in America to devote itself entirely to medieval and Renaissance studies. Since 1970, a new series, sponsored by the Modern Language Association of America and edited by an international board of distinguished scholars and critics, has published interdisciplinary articles. In yearly hardcover volumes, the new series publishes significant scholarship, criticism, an...

Michel de Montaigne was one of the most influential figures of the Renaissance, singlehandedly responsible for popularising the essay as a literary form. In 1572, Montaigne retired to his estates in order to devote himself to leisure, reading and reflection. There he wrote his constantly expanding 'essays', inspired by the ideas he found in books from his library and his own experience. He discusses subjects as diverse as war-horses and cannibals, poetry and politics, sex and religion, lov...

Family trees are best viewed on a tablet.A brilliant history of the succession of James I of England, and the shifting power and lethal politics that brought him to the throne.In the dawn of the 17th-century when Mary Queen of Scots was dead and Elizabeth I grown old, the eyes of the English turned to Mary’s son, James VI of Scotland. Leanda de Lisle's book focuses on the intense period of raised hopes and dashed expectations between Christmas 1602 and Christmas 1603, durin...

From the frightful spectacle of poverty, barbarity and ignorance, from the oppression of illiterate masters, and the sufferings of a degraded peasantry, which the annals of England and France present to us, it is delightful to turn to the opulent and enlightened states of Italy, to the vast and magnificent cities, the ports, the arsenals, the villas, the museums, the libraries, the marts filled with every article of comfort or luxury, the factories swarming with artisans... With peculiar p...

In September 1665, plague was inadvertently transported from London to Eyam in Derbyshire on a consignment of cloth. This small country village subsequently became famous for its decision to instate a ‘cordon sanitaire’, isolating itself to prevent the disease from spreading. Much of Eyam’s population perished during that torrid period. Eyam: Plague Village follows the local rector, the Revd William Mompesson, as he tries to support his parishioners and contain the disease. Basing his acco...

Frederick Klaeber's Beowulf has long been the standard edition for study by students and advanced scholars alike. Its wide-ranging coverage of scholarship, its comprehensive philological aids, and its exceptionally thorough notes and glossary have ensured its continued use in spite of the fact that the book has remained largely unaltered since 1936. The fourth edition has been prepared with the aim of updating the scholarship while preserving the aspects of Klaeber's work that hav...

What is the role of providence in Paradise Lost? In Looking into Providences, Raymond B. Waddington provides the first examination of this engaging subject. He explores the variety of implicit organizational structures or ‘designs’ that govern Paradise Lost, and looks in-depth at the ‘trials,’ or testing situations, which require interpretation, choice, and action from its characters.Waddington situates the poem within the context of providentialism’s cen...

The Tudor Family is the most intriguing royal dynasty in British history. Their era took us out of the Middle Ages through the Renaissance, founded the British Empire and made Britain a world power for the first time. The flowering of literature and music was unprecedented in British history. And what a family! From Henry VII who usurped Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth, through his famous son whose multiple marriages led to the break with the Roman Church, to the brilliant reign of H...

The Arma Christi, the cluster of objects associated with Christ’s Passion, was one of the most familiar iconographic devices of European medieval and early modern culture. From the weapons used to torment and sacrifice the body of Christ sprang a reliquary tradition that produced active and contemplative devotional practices, complex literary narratives, intense lyric poems, striking visual images, and innovative architectural ornament. This collection displays the fascinating range of int...

At the turn of the fifteenth century, Rome was in the midst of a dramatic transformation from what the fourteenth-century poet Petrarch had termed a "crumbling city" populated by "broken ruins" into a prosperous Christian capital. Scholars, artists, architects, and engineers fascinated by Rome were spurred to develop new graphic modes for depicting the city—and the genre known as the city portrait exploded.In Rome Measured and Imagined, Jessica Maier explores the history of...

This is the first book devoted to investigating the scholarly commonplace that Erasmus’ revival of classical learning defines his evangelical humanism. It acknowledges that it was a feat for him to challenge the obscurantism of late medieval schooling by restoring classical studies. It recognizes that his editions of Greek and Latin authors alone fix his place in the history of scholarship. But the plainest questions about this achievement may still be asked, and the most popular texts fre...