This paper presents the state of the art regarding questions such as: How much do we know about the continuity of Latin in Northwest Africa between the 5th and the 10th centuries? How well do we know Afro-Romanic? Could we determine some basic linguistic features of Afro-Romanic and, if yes, which ones? Which data are consistent with the presence…[Read more]

This paper presents the state of the art regarding questions such as: How much do we know about the continuity of Latin in Northwest Africa between the 5th and the 10th centuries? How well do we know Afro-Romanic? Could we determine some basic linguistic features of Afro-Romanic and, if yes, which ones? Which data are consistent with the presence…[Read more]

This paper presents the state of the art regarding questions such as: How much do we know about the continuity of Latin in Northwest Africa between the 5th and the 10th centuries? How well do we know Afro-Romanic? Could we determine some basic linguistic features of Afro-Romanic and, if yes, which ones? Which data are consistent with the presence…[Read more]

This paper presents the state of the art regarding questions such as: How much do we know about the continuity of Latin in Northwest Africa between the 5th and the 10th centuries? How well do we know Afro-Romanic? Could we determine some basic linguistic features of Afro-Romanic and, if yes, which ones? Which data are consistent with the presence…[Read more]

This paper presents the state of the art regarding questions such as: How much do we know about the continuity of Latin in Northwest Africa between the 5th and the 10th centuries? How well do we know Afro-Romanic? Could we determine some basic linguistic features of Afro-Romanic and, if yes, which ones? Which data are consistent with the presence…[Read more]

This paper presents the state of the art regarding questions such as: How much do we know about the continuity of Latin in Northwest Africa between the 5th and the 10th centuries? How well do we know Afro-Romanic? Could we determine some basic linguistic features of Afro-Romanic and, if yes, which ones? Which data are consistent with the presence…[Read more]

In _King Lear_ the power Goneril and Regan desire and the violence in which they participate defy orthodox notions of appropriate feminine conduct. Because power as a feminine attribute is rejected as a violation of nature, they become “evil.” Rather than assuming that real women, or good women, will not defend their own power or the sov…[Read more]

This essay is part of a collection of open access articles on Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The articles are written for first-time readers of Chaucer and are designed to supplement the teaching of the Canterbury Tales, particularly in university classrooms.

My contribution is focused on the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, providing an…[Read more]

Early Modern English historiography had a multi-layered bipolar constitution. Providentialism, which had dominated Medieval English thought, maintained that historical events processed according to God’s divine plan. However, with the revival and reinterpretation of Classical texts, a new and quite opposite way of thinking emerged, which was d…[Read more]

Building on Elizabethan dramatic conventions and religious debates about ghosts, Hamlet employs linguistic and dramatic means to chill its audience. Audio-visual means, along with the manner of entrances and exits, are used in order to horrify the audience. These create a fluctuation between belief and disbelief towards the macabre elements in the…[Read more]

The complexity of Medieval Iberia’s linguistic, religious, and cultural diversity is a commonplace. Descriptions abound of the lands that are now modern Spain and Portugal as a “melting pot” or a “multicultural” space. However, modern literary history, with its tendency toward monolingual, national narratives, has produced a vision of medieval…[Read more]

The complexity of Medieval Iberia’s linguistic, religious, and cultural diversity is a commonplace. Descriptions abound of the lands that are now modern Spain and Portugal as a “melting pot” or a “multicultural” space. However, modern literary history, with its tendency toward monolingual, national narratives, has produced a vision of medieval…[Read more]

English Alliterative Verse tells the story of the medieval poetic tradition that includes Beowulf, Piers Plowman, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, stretching from the eighth century, when English poetry first appeared in manuscripts, to the sixteenth century, when alliterative poetry ceased to be composed. Eric Weiskott draws on the study of…[Read more]

In this essay I discuss the racial formations of Alessandro de’ Medici, first duke of Florence. These formations derive from different sources: verbal descriptions, portraiture, and the material evidence of Alessandro’s remains. I examine whether a painted “description” tallies with a verbal one, considering the variety of terms used to describ…[Read more]

a b s t r ac t
Alessandro de’ Medici’s life and its representation reveal important beliefs about family, politics,
and genealogy during the Italian Renaissance. Duke Alessandro’s government marked the end of
the Florentine Republic and the beginning of hereditary rule. Many scholars interpret Alessandro’s
assassination as a fitting end to…[Read more]

Historians, literary scholars, and international lawyers interested in the early modern period have all grappled with the problem of anachronism, yet mostly independently of one another. This essay uses the question of war crime in Shakespeare’s Henry V to argue that early modernists interested in international law need not reject synchronic h…[Read more]