This article considers a recent critical problematisation of the discussion of ›Otherness‹ in Merovingian archaeology (Halsall 2017), and extends this problematisation to the early mortuary archae- ology of post-Roman/early Anglo-Saxon England. The article first examines the literary goals of Gildas’ De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, and espec…[Read more]

This article considers a recent critical problematisation of the discussion of ›Otherness‹ in Merovingian archaeology (Halsall 2017), and extends this problematisation to the early mortuary archae- ology of post-Roman/early Anglo-Saxon England. The article first examines the literary goals of Gildas’ De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, and espec…[Read more]

Argues that to pass silently over the connections between English and Scottish literature is to reduce the multiple trajectories of British literary history, to silence the tensions regarding imperialism and sovereignty motivating literary production, and to miss out on the fruitful circulation of non- Chaucerian literary techniques such as the…[Read more]

The presence of Scotland on the medieval map has remained largely unstudied, yet its historic contested existence within the British Isles makes it an ideal subject of analysis in determining the role early maps play in expressions of the nation. This essay offers a survey of medieval English cartographic depictions of Scotland which demonstrates…[Read more]

La enorme complejidad de jurisdicciones medievales determina la existencia de una diversidad de diferentes modalidades de nominación de los escribanos públicos. Nuestro objetivo es analizar el caso concreto del notariado de Langreo, núcleo urbano asturiano que en el periodo bajomedieval perteneció a la jurisdicción compartida entre dos inst…[Read more]

The open access movement has taken a strong hold within cultural heritage institutions, as large-scale digitization efforts are becoming increasingly popular in most libraries, museums, and archives. These initiatives have had a particular effect on the status of rare and unique materials through the provision of high-quality images and…[Read more]

My article takes up the thirteenth-century French allegorical poem, the Roman de la Rose, a poem that was begun by one author and continued by another after the death of the first. I consider how the second part of the poem foregrounds its status as a continuation, arguing that the work exemplifies a model of literary succession marked by mourning…[Read more]

Through an engagement with theory from the fields of art history, anthropology, and sociology, this article examines the archival existence of medieval manuscripts and facilitates an understanding of archival practice and its effects on user experience from the perspective of the researcher, rather than from that of the archivist or information…[Read more]

Occasionally, the handlers of the past chose to leave marks more permanent than the everyday wear and tear. The deliberate traces left by past user(s) demand further inquiry, beseeching us to investigate more closely the relationship between our experiences of manuscripts today, and those responses of past readers who have left an indelible mark…[Read more]

A capital with an unusual scene of the Baptism of Jesus has recently been excavated in the late twelfth-century cloister of San Juan de la Peña (Huesca). Remarkable for its depiction of a youthful Saviour seated in a footed baptismal font, the image deviates significantly from the traditional Romanesque formula of an adult Jesus baptized in the…[Read more]

Im Œuvre des Architekten Hans Scharoun lässt sich ab den 1930er-Jahren eine besondere und spezifische Art der Fotografie ausmachen. Hinter diesen Fotografien liegt dabei weit mehr – zum Teil Brisantes – verborgen als ihnen beim ersten Anblick anzusehen wäre. Anhand der Häuser Mattern und Moll werden diese Fotografien im vorliegenden Text untersu…[Read more]

Un poco antes de fallecer, recién rebasada la mitad del siglo XV (1454), el monarca castellano Juan II se atrevió a exponer en breves palabras la tremenda carga que suponía para
cualquier mortal el ejercicio del poder regio, es decir, lo que habitualmente se conoce con el modismo de «el peso de la púrpura»: “Naciera yo fijo de un labrador e fuera…[Read more]

Undergraduate Seminar on Medieval and Golden Spanish Literature

Graduate Seminar of Spanish Literature of the Middle Ages & Renaissance

Undergraduate Seminar in Medieval and Golden Age Spanish Literature

A half-erased woman’s name is partially legible at the bottom of folio 41 verso of the Anglo-Saxon manuscript we now call the Vercelli Book. Edith – eadgiþ – provides mystery as highly unusual marginalia, an individual name added to and then erased from the manuscript. I argue here that the erased name eadgiþ is direct reference to St. Edith o…[Read more]

The figure of Hrothgar, aging king of the Danes, forces an analysis of the relationships among age, maleness, and masculinity in Beowulf. Masculine characters, while enacting the poem’s complex reciprocities and social transactions in the hall and on the battlefield, accrue status and power through assertions of control and dominance, through…[Read more]

The performances of Christ in the text of The Dream of the Rood construct a masculinity for Christ that is majestic, martial, and specifically heterosexual and that relies on a fragile opposition with a femininity defined as dominated Other in the figure of the Cross. His particularly constructed masculinity, explored rather than merely assumed or…[Read more]

Traditional equation of women with the feminine and men with the masculine is disrupted when Beowulf is read within the rubric of gender performance as determined by Judith Butler in Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter. Performativity enables a new way of interpreting the characters of Beowulf; specifically, in the world of the poem masculinity…[Read more]