The dominant literate culture of early medieval England – male, European, and Christian – often represented itself through comparison to exotic beings and mon- sters, in traditions developed from native mythologies, and Classical and Biblical sources. So pervasive was this reflexive identification that the language of the mon- strous occurs not…[Read more]

This short essay explores Susan Einbinder’s observation that the poetics of the medieval Anglo-Jewish poet Meir of Norwich show a unique mix of borrowing from
the poetic schools of both Ashkenaz and Sepharad. Boyarin argues that Meir was discursively creating a school of Anglo-Hebrew poetics, one that he imagined drew from both of these e…[Read more]

The dominant literate culture of early medieval England – male, European, and Christian – often represented itself through comparison to exotic beings and monsters, in traditions developed from native mythologies, and Classical and Biblical sources. So pervasive was this reflexive identification that the language of the monstrous occurs not onl…[Read more]

“Answering the Call of the Severed Head,” Heads Will Roll: Decapitation Motifs in Medieval Literature, ed. Larissa Tracy (Leiden: Brill, 2012)

“Introduction: The Impact of Monsters and Monster Studies,” in Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, ed. Asa Simon Mittman, with Peter Dendle (London: Ashgate, 2012), 1-14

Review of a collection of essays by Carl Dahlhaus, translated by Derrick Puffett and Alfred Clayton and entitled Schoenberg and the New Music.

Abstract: This essay attempts to draw connections between medieval maps and their
many monsters, digital cartographical interfaces, and modern experiences of the world.
Each impacts our understandings of the others. The medieval notion of speculum – the
metaphorical mirror that allows us to see our worlds and ourselves more clearly – dra…[Read more]

Review of the Lippman and Rahn books, both devoted to music aeathetics.

Review of Forte’s book devoted to the analysis of Tin Pan Alley popular music.

Review of three books devoted to progressive rock snd its history.

Reviews Freeman/s book with special attention paid to the development of music school curricula.

Review of Borthwick’s book, which approaches music theory from a point of view informed by philosophy.

“Introduction to Mappings,” with Dan Terkla, Peregrinations: The Official Publication of the International Society for the Study of Pilgrimage Art, vol. IV:I (2013): 134-160

“Forking Paths? Matthew Paris, Jorge Luis Borges, and Maps of the Labyrinth,” Peregrinations: The Official Publication of the International Society for the Study of Pilgrimage Art, vol. IV:I (2013): 134-160

Medieval Christian mapmakers represented a range of peoples, animals and monsters against which they defined their place what they believed to be God’s divine plan. Rooted in earlier anti-Semitic tropes, the detailed world maps of the thirteenth/early fourteenth centuries contain multiple problematic representations of Jews, perceived at once as d…[Read more]

This essay considers the use of the modern term ‘monstrous races’ to describe the wondrous beings found in Herodotus, Pliny, The Wonders of the East, world maps and elsewhere. Considering the etymology and history of the word ‘race,’ a series of modern definitions are tested out on figures found in the images and texts of the British Library…[Read more]

This article focuses on the images and texts on page 3 of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Junius 11, in which Lucifer foments rebellion, falls, and, as Satan, is bound to the mouth of hell. The bottom third of the page contains an image of falling angels, Satan, and the hellmouth. Above that image and to the left is written “hER SE,” Old English for…[Read more]

British Library Harley MS 3954’s Book of Sir John Mandeville has ninety-nine images, and another thirty-five blanks, carefully framed in thin lines of ink as part of the ruling of the manuscript. As is so often the case, the blanks appear more frequently toward the end. On the final folio (69v) there appears a neatly framed blank space (Figure 1…[Read more]

The eleventh-century Old English Illustrated Hexateuch, probably produced in the second quarter of the eleventh century, in or near St. Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, houses a wealth of imagery, including several images of giants that appear throughout the manuscript’s approximately 400 images and 156 folios. These giants form a primary point of…[Read more]

When Anglo-Saxon warriors buckled on gem encrusted, intricately wrought gold arms and armor, they did not merely transform their appearance, but shifted their fundamental ontology. We consider objects from the Staffordshire Hoard as embodiments of fah and aelf-sciéne, specifically Anglo-Saxon ideas of visual splendor, and the modern notion of…[Read more]