The manuscript now called the Salisbury Breviary (Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, MS lat. 17294) contains the only extant illustrated cycle of of the Life of St Edith of Wilton; the fifteen miniatures accompany the readings for the feast of St Edith. These images emphasize the connections among Edith’s holiness, royal genealogy, and…[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]

An entry in the Women Medievalists and the Academy collection, this brief biography presents Cambridge historian Mary Bateson, scholar and suffragist, who lived on the cusp of the opportunity for academic professionalization for women. Her life illustrates an inspiring blend of serious scholarship, accessible publication, and devoted political…[Read more]

Feminist and gender scholars working in Anglo-Saxon studies in the past ten years have been asking new and important questions of a variety of Old English and Anglo-Latin texts. Most crucially, this interdisciplinary new work redefines the historiographical paradigms of Anglo-Saxon cultural production and reception so that women must now be…[Read more]

Abstract: This short edition makes available for the first time three Middle English verse prayers to Christ from the Mohun Hours, a fourteenth-century Book of Hours held by the Boston Public Library (MS 124). Late medieval Books of Hours have received substantial recent critical attention as expressions of devotional literacy practiced mainly by…[Read more]

Historical source study of the last text in the composite manuscript Lon- don, BL Cotton Faustina B.iii can shed light on the transmission and use of chronicle texts and their translations in late medieval England. The author of the Middle English verse Life of St. Æthelthryth used John Trevisa’s English translation of Ranulf Higden’s Poly…[Read more]

Round Table on Diversity and Teaching Medieval Studies sponsored by Graduate Student Council. Session title: “Tearing Down Walls, Building Bridges:
Medieval Diversity and Cross-Cultural Encounters in Syllabus Design and Teaching.” This paper is about two courses that illustrate the principle “Diversity in Every Course Title” and several…[Read more]

This essay reexamines the mixtures of genres in The Comedy of Errors to argue that Shakespeare’s play encourages reflection on genre as a mode of representation. In particular, the genres of romance and farce each offer specific approaches to subjectivity, which would have been especially meaningful to early modern urban playgoers grappling with…[Read more]

Emphasizing the peculiar, the perverse, the clandestine and the scandalous, this volume opens up a critical discourse on sexuality and visual culture in early modern Italy. Contributors consider not just painted (conventional) representations of sexual activities and eroticized bodies, but also images from print media, drawings, sculpted objects…[Read more]

Questo volume propone un discorso critico sulla sessualità e sulla cultura visiva dell’Italia rinascimentale. I saggi raccolti tentano di fare luce su una serie di zone d’ombra, dando spazio a tutte quelle pratiche o preferenze considerate in genere come alternative o anomalie, e a un’ampia varietà di scenari “scandalosi”. Particolare attenzione…[Read more]

Shakespearean tragedies and comedies have been adapted to the silver screen in India, Malaysia, Tibet, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, and Japan. How do Shakespeare and modern directors talk to each other across cultural and historical divides? Why are particular strategies used or themes emphasized? How are pre-linguistic structures of spectacle and…[Read more]

Dany Laferrière’s first novel, Comment faire l’amour avec un Nègre was a literary sensation when it was first released in Quebec in the mid-80s. The author/narrator plays with reader’s expectations, presenting both a stereotypical image of the black man (sex-obsessed, white-hating) and one that contradicts and upsets their expectations. Influen…[Read more]

An analysis of the collaboration between Peter Miller and Louis Dudek in the translation of Anne Hébert’s poem, The Tomb of Kings.

This essay analyzes the illustration sequences of the four magnificent Gospel books made for Judith of Flanders within the context of the political chaos in pre-Conquest England. These deluxe display books indicate one of the ways that literacy and literary patronage provided cultural legitimacy and social status for secular women in the late…[Read more]

Abstract
After 1588, several socio-political and economic problems appeared in the Elizabethan society. These problems were
aggravated by Elizabeth I’s desire to live royally without responsibility. The correlation between good government and the
responsibility of monarchs was emphasised in the literature of the period, as well. Particularly, t…[Read more]

Shakespeare in Animation

In late 1991, an editor at the Sunday New York Times Book Review asked me to write a feature article about that uniquely American genre, the Indian captivity narrative. When the editor called, I was dean of the College of Humanities at the University of Arizona. I accepted the Times assignment in hopes that writing this article might prove a…[Read more]

One of the most familiar literary topics is the seduction scene. Both Shakespeare and Milton enhance this tradition by shifting the motives offered by the seducer to ones fitting increasingly autonomous and ambitious women, foreshadowing many of the concerns of modern feminism.

One of the most familiar literary topics is the seduction scene. Both Shakespeare and Milton enhance this tradition by shifting the motives offered by the seducer to ones fitting increasingly autonomous and ambitious women, foreshadowing many of the concerns of modern feminism.

One of the most familiar literary topics is the seduction scene. Both Shakespeare and Milton enhance this tradition by shifting the motives offered by the seducer to ones fitting increasingly autonomous and ambitious women, foreshadowing many of the concerns of modern feminism.