The “Passio Domini” Theme in the Works of Richard Rolle: His Personal Contribution in its Religious, Cultural and Literary Context by Mary Felicitas Madigan, and: The Southern Version of Cursor Mundi ed. by Sarah M. Horrall

1980 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 493-500
Author(s):  
Anthony S. G. Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Literary Context ◽  
Richard Rolle ◽  
Personal Contribution ◽  
Cursor Mundi

Ildar Garipzanov, Caroline Goodson, and Henry Maguire, ed., Graphic Signs of Identity, Faith, and Power in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Cursor Mundi, 27, Turnhout: Brepols, 2017, xviii, 392 p., 141 ill.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 377-379
Author(s):  
Kriszta Kotsis
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Visual Communication ◽  
Group Identity ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
The Third ◽  
Cursor Mundi ◽  
Definition Of

Late antique and early medieval graphic signs have traditionally been studied by narrowly focused specialists leading to the fragmentation and decontextualization of this important body of material. Therefore, the volume aims “to deepen interdisciplinary research on graphic signs” (7) of the third through tenth centuries, with contributions from archaeologists, historians, art historians, a philologist, and a paleographer. Ildar Garipzanov’s introduction defines the central terms (sign, symbol, graphicacy), calls for supplanting the text-image binary with “the concept of the visual-written continuum” (15), and argues that graphicacy was central to visual communication in this period. He emphasizes the agency of graphic signs and notes that their study can amplify our understanding of the definition of personal and group identity, the articulation of power, authority, and religious affiliation, and communication with the supernatural sphere.

Transforming the Vulgate: Comestor and the Middle English Genesis and Exodus

Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-152
Author(s):  
Brian S. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Cursor Mundi

The article studies the literary or rhetorical effects of the transformation into plain narrative of biblical material originally compiled from different and often incomplete sources. Avoiding allegorical interpretations of the Bible’s theocentric history, Comestor in his “Historia Scholastica” and the Middle English poems based upon it, “Genesis and Exodus” and “Cursor Mundi,” sought to clarify difficult passages for the instruction and entertainment, rather than moral exhortation, of their for the most part unlearned, or illiterate, audiences. One result of their work was to fill or paper over lacunae and ambiguities that pique the curiosity of readers wanting to know more of the human stories implicit in the incidents described. Key passages in these texts will be examined.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Hurley ◽  
Marcus Waithe
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Delivery System ◽  
Literary Context ◽  
Nineteenth Century Studies

This chapter evaluates the competing ways that ‘style’ has been said to operate in language. Rather than figure thought as primary and pre-verbal, and language as a secondary delivery system, this chapter recommends a messier relationship, whereby writing is not a simple act of translating but also a means of clarifying or generating ideas. The twenty subsequent chapters of this book exemplify this account of style as a mode of thinking through. Outlines of these individual essays are given, and correspondences drawn. The value of the book as a whole is addressed, as it contributes to scholarship on style and on the essay, and to nineteenth-century studies in particular: by revaluating some of the most influential figures of that age, providing a literary context for those celebrated ‘minds’ and ‘moralists’, while also re-imagining the possible alliances, interplays, and generative tensions between thinking, thinkers, style, and stylists.

Veiling Esther, Unveiling Her Story

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam J. Silverstein
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Religious Background ◽  
Literary Context ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Selection Of

This book examines the ways in which the biblical book of Esther was read, understood, and used in Muslim lands, from ancient to modern times. It zeroes-in on a selection of case studies, covering works from various periods and regions of the Muslim world, including the Qur’an, premodern historical chronicles and literary works, the writings of a nineteenth-century Shia feminist, a twentieth-century Iranian dictionary, and others. These case studies demonstrate that Muslim sources contain valuable materials on Esther, which shed light both on the Esther story itself and on the Muslim peoples and cultures that received it. The book argues that Muslim sources preserve important, pre-Islamic materials on Esther that have not survived elsewhere, some of which offer answers to ancient questions about Esther, such as the meaning of Haman’s epithet in the Greek versions of the story, the reason why Mordecai refused to prostrate himself before Haman, and the literary context of the “plot of the eunuchs” to kill the Persian king. Furthermore, throughout the book we will see how each author’s cultural and religious background influenced his or her understanding and retelling of the Esther story: In particular, it will be shown that Persian Muslims (and Jews) were often forced to reconcile or choose between the conflicting historical narratives provided by their religious and cultural heritages respectively.

La Bête humaine

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Émile Zola
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Technological Progress ◽  
Second Empire ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Context ◽  
The Future

Did possessing and killing amount to the same thing deep within the dark recesses of the human beast? La Bete humaine (1890), is one of Zola’s most violent and explicit works. On one level a tale of murder, passion and possession, it is also a compassionate study of individuals derailed by atavistic forces beyond their control. Zola considered this his ‘most finely worked’ novel, and in it he powerfully evokes life at the end of the Second Empire in France, where society seemed to be hurtling into the future like the new locomotives and railways it was building. While expressing the hope that human nature evolves through education and gradually frees itself of the burden of inherited evil, he is constantly reminding us that under the veneer of technological progress there remains, always, the beast within. This new translation captures Zola's fast-paced yet deliberately dispassionate style, while the introduction and detailed notes place the novel in its social, historical, and literary context.

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