Father Chaucer’s Heirs

2019 ◽  
pp. 212-228
Author(s):  
Samantha Katz Seal
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
Knight's Tale ◽  
The Middle Ages

In conclusion to this book, Chapter 6 looks at the Middle Ages’ model of reproductive perfection—fathers producing sons—to identify how even in the most ideal of circumstances, men cannot gain a true authority upon the earth. For from the Monk’s Tale to the Knight’s Tale to the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, Chaucer makes men confront how poorly they resemble the quality of their fathers. Each generation becomes a siring of loss, a gradual descent into something worse than its progenitor. And yet, Chaucer agues, there is nothing else for men within the world. To reproduce in the pursuit of authority is a doomed quest, one that he himself will repent of in the Retractions. But there is nothing more human than the desire to create something that will last beyond one’s death, to hope in a future posterity even knowing the odds against its realization.

scholarly journals The Ebstorf Map: tradition and contents of a medieval picture of the world

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Pischke
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The Middle Ages

Abstract. The Ebstorf Map (Wilke, 2001; Kugler, 2007; Wolf, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2009a, b), the largest medieval map of the world whose original has been lost, is not only a geographical map. In the Middle Ages, a map contained mystic, historical and religious motifs. Of central importance is Jesus Christ, who, in the Ebstorf Map, is part of the earth. The Ebstorf Map contains the knowledge of the time of its creation; it can be used for example as an atlas, as a chronicle of the world, or as an illustrated Bible.

scholarly journals Heaven and the Sphaera Mundi in the Middle Ages

2000 ◽  
Vol 04 (01) ◽  
pp. 10-35
Author(s):  
Edgar Laird
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval Literature ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The Moon ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The Middle Ages

This paper examines the development of the idea of heaven in relation to the sphaera mundi - the sphere of the world - in medieval literature. The sphaera mundi is a model of the cosmos that at its most elementary is very simple indeed. At the centre of it is the earth, so small as to be virtually a dot in comparison to the whole or even to the smallest star. Earth is surrounded by the sea, which in turn is surrounded by air, as also air is surrounded by fire. Surrounding the fire is a sphere that 'bears' the moon, and around that sphere are others, like layers of an onion, bearing the other planets: Mercury, then Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Then come the sphere bearing the fixed stars and, beyond it, one or more others. All these spheres together constitute the sphere of the world.

scholarly journals Desmontando mitos sobre la Tierra en la Edad Media

2020 ◽  
pp. 69-96
Author(s):  
Sandra Sáenz-López Pérez ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Complex World ◽  
Religious Symbolism ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
The Middle Ages

This paper dismantles thanks to cartography three myths commonly associated with the Middle Ages: the idea that the Earth was flat, that Jerusalem was in the center of the world, and that dragons inhabited its margins. The visual richness that medieval maps boast presents a more complex world than the one we have invented for it. As it is well known, appearances can be deceiving. The lack of scientific projection and the importance of religious symbolism must be overcome to discover the world of the Middle Ages.

The Venerable Bede on Prayer and Contemplation

Traditio ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 1-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott DeGregorio
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Distinctive Feature ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Good Sense ◽  
Venerable Bede ◽  
The Middle Ages

As a monk at the famous Northumbrian monastery of Jarrow, the Venerable Bede (673–735) produced a body of exegetical work that enjoyed enormous popularity throughout the Middle Ages. Something of that spirit seems to have reawakened in recent years, as Bede's commentaries are increasingly being studied and made available to wider audiences in English translation. One distinctive feature of this development is a growing awareness that Bede's reputation as an exegete is more multifaceted than has been previously realized, that it goes beyond what Beryl Smalley called “his faithful presentation of the tradition in its many aspects. Whereas earlier interpreters were content to regard Bede as a mere compiler reputed for his good sense and able Latinity, scholars are now paying homage to him as a penetrating and perceptive biblical commentator who did more than reproduce the thought of the fathers who preceded him. As I intend to show in what follows, Bede's treatment of prayer and contemplation in his exegesis attests well to this quality of his thought. The topic to date has received only minimal commentary, mainly on what Bede actually taught about prayer. My approach will be different. I begin with a discussion not of Bede's exegetical method but of his occupations and aims as a spiritual writer. Neither Bede's spirituality nor his role as spiritual writer have received the attention they deserve, and it is hoped that the reflections offered here will help rekindle interest in these neglected subjects. I then consider four prayer-related themes in his exegesis that bring his aims as a spiritual writer into view. Patristic tradition had commented widely on prayer, and Bede, we will see, did not set out to summarize this tradition in its entirety but rather to highlight and distill certain themes within it, those that best suited the needs of his Anglo-Saxon audience.

Clothing and Female Reclusion in The Life of Mary of Egypt and The Life of Christina of Markyate

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-31
Author(s):  
Anna McKay
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Feminist Scholarship ◽  
Literary Representation ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Holy Women ◽  
Experiences Of Women ◽  
Mary Of Egypt ◽  
The Middle Ages

Over the past two decades, medieval feminist scholarship has increasingly turned to the literary representation of textiles as a means of exploring the oftensilenced experiences of women in the Middle Ages. This article uses fabric as a lens through which to consider the world of the female recluse, exploring the ways in which clothing operates as a tether to patriarchal, secular values in Paul the Deacon’s eighthcentury Life of Mary of Egypt and the twelfth-century Life of Christina of Markyate. In rejecting worldly garb as recluses, these holy women seek out and achieve lives of spiritual autonomy and independence.

Mandelstam: The Realm of Unexpectedness

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 62-83
Author(s):  
Svetlana S. Neretina
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Logical Framework ◽  
Creation Process ◽  
The Real ◽  
Logical Construction ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Middle Ages

In the essay “Conversation about Dante,” Mandelstam described logic, which he defined as the “realm of unexpectedness,” which is unlike any everyday logical construction. Based on the analysis of Mandelstam’s text, it is assumed that we are talking about a tropology that arose in the Middle Ages, the principles of which can be derived from studies of St. Augustine’s treatise De Dialectica and Petrus Сomestor’s Historia Scholastica. It is this triple commonwealth (Augustine – Comestor – Dante, read by Mandelstam) that creates the multilayered logical framework of the work. Augustine created a completely different dialectic than in classical antiquity. Augustine considers dialectics as an art of discussion and describes the real steps that contribute to the emergence of speech, which corresponds to Mandelstam’s concept of conversation. According to Augustine, at the basis of any speech, is a trope-turn. In the article, attention is drawn to the sound nature of creation process. This logic, used in explaining the creation of the world according to the logos/word (tropology), assumes that, at the basis of the speech act, there is no the word as a unit of speech, but the sound itself – the sound, which was considered initially equivocal (ambiguous). In the process of pronounciation, the sound could turn into its opposite and could change the meaning of speech if the context has been changed. Dante expressed the meaning of tropology in practice. Mandelstam wrote that he had chosen Dante for the conversation (between poet and poet) “because he is the greatest and indisputable master of reversible and reversing poetic substance.” Mandelstam saw Dante as the Descartes of metaphor.

On the Psychology of the Crusades

1906 ◽  
Vol 52 (219) ◽  
pp. 745-755
Author(s):  
William W. Ireland
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
The World ◽  
Common Nature ◽  
The Middle Ages

Although the world will never again see anything like the great crusades of the middle ages, these events may be traced to causes which, though now of less force, still influence the human mind, appealing to the simplest and deepest cravings of our common nature.

Aristotle's Unmoved Movers

Traditio ◽  
1946 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Merlan
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Other ◽  
World Picture ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Concentric Spheres ◽  
The One ◽  
The Universe ◽  
The Middle Ages

According to Aristotle all heavenly movement is ultimately due to the activity of forty-seven (or fifty-five) ‘unmoved movers'. This doctrine is highly remarkable in itself and has exercised an enormous historical influence. It forms part of a world-picture the outlines of which are as follows. The universe consists of concentric spheres, revolving in circles. The outermost of these bears the fixed stars. The other either bear planets or, insofar as they do not, contribute indirectly to the movements of the latter. Each sphere is moved by the one immediately surrounding it, but also possesses a movement of its own, due to its mover, an unmoved, incorporeal being. (It was these beings which the schoolmen designated as theintelligentiae separatae.) The seemingly irregular movements of the planets are thus viewed as resulting from the combination of regular circular revolutions. The earth does not move and occupies the centre of the universe. Such was Aristotle's astronomic system, essential parts of which were almost universally adopted by the Arabic, Jewish, and Christian philosophers of the Middle Ages.

scholarly journals Michel Seress’ Integumentum, or Why Ecology Lies (Also) Beyond Arguments

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-82
Author(s):  
Alexandru Matei ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Ecological Theory ◽  
Sacred Texts ◽  
Michel Serres ◽  
The World ◽  
The Middle Ages

During the Middle Ages, integumentum was a term widely used by “intellectuals” (Le Goff) in order to unfold the function of allegory: there is no story whose signification does not echo the sacred texts, and every sacred truth needs a story to bring it to life. Integumentum was a way to make this echo explicit: a sort of “poetical coat hiding a moral or philosophical truth” (John of Garland). We want to suggest that, while no one uses integumentum anymore in order to designate the rhetoric of modern and contemporary theoretical discourse, it is in ecological theory that we may rediscover its afterlives. Hence, integumentum is not only a form of telling truths, but a form of memory, as well. In this respect, Michel Serres may be considered the first “ecological” thinker, as he avoids abstract metalanguages as much as possible, relying instead on fictions and characters in his attempt to describe the world afresh. If integumentum resurfaces as the proper way of “ecologizing,” instead of modernizing (Latour), we would like to uncover, in Michel Serres’ works, the dialectic of subjects and objects.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document