This book argues that far from preaching traditional, otherworldly ideals, the authors or these religious works were deeply engaged in the social, political, and spiritual issues that characterized the Holy Roman Empire at a time of radical transformation.

Follow the incredible career journey of Lisa Lutoff-Perlo, from her stories as an ambitious young woman to Vice Chairman for External Affairs at Royal Caribbean Group.A shining testament to the value of being an authentic leader and never sacrificing your integrity, Lutoff-Perlo details the ins and outs of her extraordinary 40-year career. She has risen to the top in a male-dominated industry, while refusing to compromise her values and bringing countless others al...

Celtic mythology, Arthurian romance, and an intriguing interpretation of British history - these are just some of the themes embraced by the anonymous authors of the eleven tales that make up the Welsh medieval masterpiece known as the Mabinogion. They tell of Gwydion the shape-shifter, who can create a woman out of flowers; of Math the magician whose feet must lie in the lap of a virgin; of hanging a pregnant mouse and hunting a magical boar. Dragons, witches, and giantslive alongside kin...

The Iliad and the Odyssey are attributed to the poet Homer and are the earliest surviving works of Western literature. Composed sometime around the eighth century BC, the ancient Greek poems has since been translated into many languages and serves as an important source of information on ancient Greek culture and mythology.In the Iliad it is the tenth year of the Trojan War. The Greek allies have laid siege to the city of Troy, but the leaders of the Gree...

Waking to find himself shipwrecked on a strange shore before a dark wood, the pilgrim of the Divine Comedy realizes he must set his sights higher and guide his ship to a radically different port. Starting on the sand of that very shore with Dante, John Freccero begins retracing the famous voyage recounted by the poet nearly 700 years ago.Freccero follows pilgrim and poet through the Comedy and then beyond, inviting readers both uninitiated and accomplished to join him in navigating...

When the First Crusade ended with the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, jubilant crusaders returned home to Europe bringing with them stories, sacred relics, and other memorabilia, including banners, jewelry, and weapons. In the ensuing decades, the memory of the crusaders' bravery and pious sacrifice was invoked widely among the noble families of western Christendom. Popes preaching future crusades would count on these very same families for financing, leadership, and for th...

Pestilence in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature examines three diseases--leprosy, bubonic plague, and syphilis--to show how doctors, priests, and literary authors from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance interpreted certain illnesses through a moral filter. Lacking knowledge about the transmission of contagious diseases, doctors and priests saw epidemic diseases as a punishment sent by God for human transgression. Accordingly, their job was to properly read sickness in relat...

Original and engaging, this study presents the four anonymous poems found in the Cotton Nero MS - Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - as a composite text with a continuous narrative. While it is widely accepted that the poems attributed to the Pearl-Poet ought to be read together, this book demonstrates that instead of being analyzed as four distinct, though interconnected, textual entities, they ought to be studied as a single literary unit that produces mean...

In this book, Jennifer Garrison examines literary representations of the central symbol of later medieval religious culture: the Eucharist. In contrast to scholarship that depicts mainstream believers as enthusiastically and simplistically embracing the Eucharist, Challenging Communion: The Eucharist and Middle English Literature identifies a pervasive Middle English literary tradition that rejects simplistic notions of eucharistic promise.Through new readings of texts such...

This book explores the ways in which discourses of religious, racial, and national identity blur and engage each other in the medieval West. Specifically, the book studies depictions of Muslims in England during the 1330s and argues that these depictions, although historically inaccurate, served to enhance and advance assertions of English national identity at this time. The book examines Saracen characters in a manuscript renowned for the variety of its texts, and discusses hagiographic l...

In Chaucer's Dead Body, Thomas Prendergast looks at the material reasons behind Chaucer's transformation into a touchstone for the whole of the Anglophone Middle Ages. This book weaves an intricate argument about the ways that the body, death, and representation come together in the recuperation and reception of Chaucer over the centuries, and proposes a deeply compelling logic that links memorialization and canon formation. Making a persuasive and intriguing case that the status of Chauce...

This collection of essays offers fresh analysis of topics in the exciting area of Atlantic World studies. Challenging standard assumptions, the essays advance the argument that the Atlantic Ocean was a region that encompassed ethnic and political boundaries, in which a sub-community shaped by culture and commerce arose.