In Order to understand what a “global Middle Ages” might be, we need to define “global” in and in relation to the “Middle Ages.” To do so, I turn to medieval (Christian) maps. Their construction of the world-the most, maybe all, others-was founded on inclusion and exclusion. In seeking to construct a global Middle Ages, the authors in this volume…[Read more]

Manuscript culture in Icelandic immigrant communities in North America is examined through the case study of an immigrant-scribe, Albert Jóhannesson (1847–1921), who left Iceland as an adult in 1884 and eventually settled in the community of Hecla Island, Manitoba, Canada. Albert Jóhannesson is one of the last known individuals in the Ice…[Read more]

In this essay Queen Margaret’s curses in Richard III become part of a feminist ethics on the early modern stage. As a parrhesiast, in Foucault’s terms, Margaret speaks truth to power and claims a right of citizenship. That Margaret elicits universal revulsion from the other characters while also holding a unique, though not untroubled, pos…[Read more]

This dissertation ‘Inns and Innkeeping in North Hertfordshire: 1660-1815’ addresses the lack of a localised study on this building type and supplements the wider body of work that has been undertaken, on inn form, function and innkeeping lifestyles in other regions of England during the long eighteenth century.

Review article on five recent books relating to late Latin poetry

Young Michelangelo Buonarroti’s experience was deeply marked by his cult of Antiquity, reverberated in the creation of artworks such as the Sleeping Cupid and the Bacchus and shared with Raffaele Riario and Jacopo Galli, his patrons during his first stay in Rome (1496-1501). The cardinal-camerlengo Raffaele Riario was an important promoter of t…[Read more]

The peculiar iconography of the winged horse surmounted by several puttos, as appears in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili sixth woodcut, turns out to be unprecedented and enigmatic at a glance and it’s the result of the depth and complexity of the author’s concepts. Considering the iconographic details of the sculptural group as well as the text sca…[Read more]

An article that contrasts the role of gift giving in Old English poems like Beowulf and The Battle of Maldon to Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

This essay explores glass engravings by Dutch authors Anna Roemers Visscher, Maria Tesselschade
Roemers Visscher, and Anna Maria van Schurman. I place these engravings in their rich contemporary
contexts, comparing them to other art forms that were the product of female pastime. Like
embroidery, emblems, and alba amicorum, engraved glasses…[Read more]

Ritual-magical divination in manuscript Hs. 3227a of the Germanische Nationalmuseum Nuremberg

Shakespeare’s representations of history often have replaced history itself in the popular imagination: Julius Caesar, Margaret of Anjou, Henry V, Richard III — popular recollections of their lives and deaths are intimately linked with Shakespeare’s accounts of their stories, despite the playwright’s deviations from historical facts. In order t…[Read more]

Gendered night, or the nocturnal brightness of the early modern English stage
In French, critics speak of the night using feminine terms, but the term is grammatically neutral in English. Despite this neutrality, night may be gendered. In Romeo and Juliet, virgins hide their shame from their lovers by hiding in the dark. If night is consecrated…[Read more]

For poets like Sir Philip Sidney, the numerous incongruities found in Elizabethan drama fly in the face of Aristotelian theory. London audiences in 1580-1600 would have been hard pressed to recognize the time and place of the action represented on stage from one scene to the next. By comparing Greek theory and Elizabethan practice, this paper…[Read more]

What might strike some as Arden of Faversham’s faulty construction may perhaps be ascribed to the fact that Arden’s murderers, as well as the play’s audience, had to learn how to “temper poison” (i.229). Poison is not simply a means to commit murder, its use also requires great dexterity, one which must be interpreted within a historical and metat…[Read more]

This conference aims to bring together researchers applying network analysis to pre-modern manuscripts and manuscript texts. Key topics include:

• Theoretical reflections on the challenges and advantages of applying network analysis, including social network analysis, to pre-modern written cultures;
• Application of network analysis to cor…[Read more]