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1377672 results in Books

Page 434 of 68884

Inventing Percy Grainger
  • The Construction of Biography on Page, Stage and Screen
  • Sarah Kirby
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Investigates the dialogue and tensions between Percy Grainger's public biography and his self-conscious autobiographical construction via his own writings and autobiographical museum.

    The Australian-American composer Percy Grainger (1882-1961) described himself as an 'all round man': composer, pianist, artist, inventor, linguist, ethnographer, essayist, and more. He also went to great lengths to shape his own biographical narrative, developing an eccentric public persona in the press, writing extensive autobiographical texts and establishing a vast autobiographical museum. But what happens when this self-fashioned narrative meets writers, scholars, and creatives in the decades since his death? This book traces the construction and negotiation of Grainger's biography on page, stage and screen through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, exploring the tensions and dialogue between these and Grainger's autobiographical self.

    Through a series of case studies, with a focus on works created in Australia, the book explores how Grainger's public persona and received biographical narrative were developed then transformed by other writers, playwrights, filmmakers, and performance artists to suit the changing needs of their own time and place. Examining a variety of texts, from celebrity profiles, obituaries, and traditional academic studies, to film, theatre, opera and poetry, the book offers a biography of an afterlife: a study of how Grainger set up a series of mechanisms to control how his life would be remembered, then tests these against a succession of works that engage directly with those sources.

Dance, Embodied Politics and Court Culture in Early Modern Spain
  • The Poetics Turn
  • Florence d’Artois
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Does dance tell a story? What, if anything, is it intended to represent? How was it conceived in the early modern period?

    This book examines the theories and political uses of dance in Spain during the period preceding and following the 'Poetics turn', which coincided with the rule of Philip III (1598-1621), also known as the Dancing King, and the onset of the reign of Philip IV. While this turning point finalised the definition of dance as an art form, it was also paradoxical. Indeed, this development saw the emergence of an aesthetic thought of dance within Aristotelian poetics, thanks to a common court culture, yet it never led to the formulation of a poetics of ballet.

    By recontextualising this turning point, the book examines the relationship between dance and representation during Spain's Golden Age. It revisits the initial codifications of dance in Italy and figurative experiments at the Burgundian court during the second half of the 15th century, as well as their influence on subsequent practices and humanist theories of dance at the courts of Charles V and Philip II. Subsequently, it focuses on the various shifts in court dance as it became a scenic art at the beginning of the seventeenth century, interrogating the possibility of the king performing dance himself. The book concludes that, in Spain, neo-Aristotelian ideas enabled a shift from an ethical to an aesthetic problematic, which saw dance, whether symbolic or purely kinetic in nature, as a legitimate art form to be placed at the service of the monarchy.

Thinking Through German Literature with Andrew Jaszi
  • A Foundational Approach Applied to Goethe and Kafka
  • Kenneth M. Ralston
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Brings to light an important and unconventional teacher of literature whose way of thinking and method are relevant in German Studies and beyond, particularly in view of the present crisis of the humanities.

    At a time when enrollment in the humanities is said to be in "free fall" (Nathan Heller, The New Yorker, 2/27/2023), the figure of Andrew Jaszi offers an alternative vision of what a literary education might look like. Jaszi was a Hungarian-born philosopher and literary scholar in the German Department at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1948 to 1985. His accessible, jargon-free approach, a method he developed through analogy with Goethe's unique way of doing science, attracted students of diverse backgrounds and majors to his classes, while also winning acclaim from colleagues who compared him to Wittgenstein and Buber.

    Drawing on a set of previously unknown tape recordings of Jaszi's seminars, this book offers readers the opportunity to witness this legendary teacher in action. The book's immediate benefit is the illumination provided by Jaszi's original interpretations of Goethe's Faust and Kafka's "The Judgment." More broadly, it illustrates the transformative, whole-self education Jaszi advocated and himself embodied, one that runs counter to the technocratic imperatives of our time. Ultimately, the book's goal is to make better known an important literary thinker and an unconventional teacher of German Studies, the value of whose work extends beyond a single discipline to humanities education in general, with special bearing on its present crisis and potential future.

Yoruba Pentecostalism and Child Witchcraft Accusations
  • Claire P. Ayelotan
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • An exploration of Yoruba Pentecostalism's role in child witchcraft accusations, examining migration, leadership, and collective responsibility to address faith-based child abuse globally.

    What drives communities to accuse children of witchcraft, and how do religious beliefs and leadership dynamics perpetuate this phenomenon across borders? Claire Ayelotan delves into the involvement of Yoruba (Nigerian) Pentecostal leaders in accusations of child witchcraft in Nigeria and the UK. Using a multidisciplinary approach, her research examines the theological, cultural, socioeconomic, and legal influences that drive such behaviours. Ethnographic studies and interviews with pastors and practitioners reveal how power dynamics, gender roles, and international migration intersect to perpetuate these harmful beliefs. The book uncovers gaps in current literature and presents original insights on the collective responsibility, shared beliefs, and complexities of Pentecostal leadership in this context. By focusing on the global aspects of child witchcraft accusations, it sheds new light on how migration impacts these practices and the negative consequences they have on vulnerable children.

    An important read for academics, policymakers, and child welfare professionals, this book challenges assumptions and urges immediate action to combat faith-based child abuse in all its manifestations.

Medieval Clothing and Textiles 19
  • Edited by Melanie Schuessler Bond, Cordelia Warr
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • The best new research on medieval clothing and textiles, drawing from a range of disciplines.

    The essays collected here continue to showcase the Journal's wide-ranging and eclectic tradition. The topics addressed are the sensory perceptions of textiles in Early Medieval Britain; evidence of the global textile trade as reflected in church facades in Lucca, Italy; the ways in which spinning and weaving in late medieval Cologne influenced the presentation of the cult of the Eleven Thousand Virgins within the city; sumptuary legislation in thirteenth-century Montauban, in the Occitan region of Southern France; visual representations of male underwear in northern European art; and the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century trade in knitted jersey stockings in Norwich and Yarmouth.

Peace Not War: Traditions of Restorative Justice in Imperial Ethiopia, 1769 - 1960
  • Charles Schaefer
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Examines one of the few documented early examples of restorative justice from Africa or Latin America.

    With a writing system, Ethiopian emperors as well as pretenders to the throne chronicled their exploits including peace-building feats, and this book showcases and analyses historically verified instances, from as early as 1769, where restorative justice modalities were used to resolve conflict and bring peace to the country.

    Peace not War traces Ethiopia's evolving understanding of restorative justice from the 'forgive and forget' approach which characterized the Zemene Mesafint (Era of the Princes), where perpetrators were exonerated, allowing them to recoup and build their armies to fight another day, to conditional forgiveness, recorded by the imperial court and dependent on atonement. Ethiopia's long history of experimentation with different forms of restorative justice demonstrates ingenuity, flexibility, and adaptability, but as the twentieth century progressed, workable, indigenous forms of restorative justice were sidelined by Western codified law that emphasized retribution.

Diplomacy, Trade and Imperialism in East Africa, 1850-1900
  • Rise of the Katikiro
  • Michael Pesek
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • A detailed overview of East African diplomacy at the end of the pre-colonial era, which provides a corrective to the commonly held view that African diplomats were inexperienced, naïve and parochial.

    This book traces the history of an elite group that rose to power and wealth in the interlacustrine kingdoms of East Africa at the end of the eighteenth and over the course of the nineteenth century. Katikiro played a major role in shaping the history of their societies at a time of profound change. Royal administrators, chief advisors, envoys - these influential men navigated and directed shifts in the balance of power as old hegemons like the kingdom of Bunyoro stumbled, new contenders like Buganda and Rwanda emerged, the region opened up to trade with the East African Coast and Egypt, and Europeans arrived, first as explorers and missionaries and then as colonial rulers.

    Katikiro were in midst of these changes: as politicians they shaped them; as diplomats they mediated them; and as wealthy businessmen they profited from them. Their rise in the nineteenth century offers a unique inside into the agency of Africans in these events and highlights the many continuities of pre-colonial and colonial histories in the region.

Spenser and the Filidh in Early Modern Ireland
  • Edited by Evan Bourke, Philip Mac a’ Ghoill, Deirdre Nic Chárthaigh
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Uncovers a vibrant literary culture often overlooked by colonial historiography and Anglocentric critical traditions. Reimagines Spenser's Munster through multilingual networks, bardic poetry, and digital methodologies.

    Long dominated by Anglocentric narratives, early modern literary studies have often cast Ireland as a backdrop to English self-fashioning. This volume reorients that perspective by foregrounding the multilingual, polyvocal literary culture of Munster in the late sixteenth century, situating Edmund Spenser not as an isolated colonial voice but as one writer among many-Gaelic, Old English, and New English-engaged in a contested cultural landscape. Drawing on archival, digital, and geospatial methodologies, the essays presented here explore bardic poetry, deep mapping, and the politics of language in texts by and about Spenser and his contemporaries. Case studies of bardic poetry, manuscript culture, and poetic networks reveal a vibrant and dynamic Gaelic literary tradition that responded to colonial violence.

    By integrating perspectives from Irish-language literature, English studies, and digital humanities, this collection offers a vital corrective to monolingual historiographies and opens new pathways for understanding the cultural entanglements of Spenser's Munster. It reconceptualises the idea of Spenser in Ireland by highlighting the region's cultural complexity and multilingualism, demonstrating how attention to this richness deepens our understanding of one of the most fraught and fateful periods in the shared history of Ireland and England.

Catholic Print Networks in Restoration London, 1660-1688
  • The Cross-Confessional World of Later Stuart Print Culture
  • Chelsea Reutcke
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Uncovers the hidden networks behind Catholic publishing in Restoration London, where politics, religion, and print intersected in unexpected ways under Charles II, James VII/II, and Queen Catherine of Braganza.

    In the politically volatile decades following the Restoration, the Catholic book trade in London remained a vibrant and adaptive force. This study reconstructs the networks-commercial, familial, and religious-that sustained the production and circulation of Catholic texts between 1660 and 1688. These networks operated within and across confessional boundaries, drawing in Protestants and Catholics alike, and were shaped by shifting legal frameworks, urban patronage, and the ambiguities of what constituted a 'popish' text.

    Focusing on the lived experience of printers, booksellers, and readers, the book challenges the notion of Catholic isolation in Protestant England. It reveals how Catholic print culture was embedded in the broader English print economy and public sphere, often sharing tools, spaces, and strategies with dissenting and loyalist traditions. From Somerset House to the streets of London, Catholic actors navigated censorship and suspicion with ingenuity, contributing to a paradoxical print culture that was both illicit and integrated.

    Engaging with the fields of Catholic history, book history, and Restoration studies, this monograph offers a new framework for understanding religious identity, toleration, and the mechanics of clandestine publishing. It brings to light the agency of overlooked figures and repositions Catholic print as a central, rather than marginal, feature of early modern English society.

Farming the North Sea Coast, 900-2000
  • Managing Water, Reclaiming the Land
  • Piet van Cruyningen
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • "A brilliant and provocative synthesis of a thousand years of coastal farming." Tim Soens, University of Antwerp, Belgium.

    The fascinating story of how the North Sea coast has been farmed is ever changing. Long before the industrial revolution, the inhospitable fens and marshes of the low-lying coastal wetlands on both sides of the Sea had been transformed into one of the most productive agricultural regions in Europe. Agriculture in the coastlands reached its apogee during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as is witnessed by the many impressive farm buildings established then. However, more recently, it has become clear that lowland farming and even the physical existence of the lowlands are in jeopardy, owing to rising sea levels and problems of drainage.

    This book offers a history of farming and water management on the North Sea coast, assessing the forces driving - and inhibiting - agricultural progress more broadly. It examines the ways in which farmers in the past dealt with the two main constraints on their decision-making: the natural environment and the human environment of institutional rules and customs regulating behaviour. It looks in particular at how setbacks were overcome, and how farming practices were improved which then raised the money with which to finance the maintenance of dykes, canals, and sluices.

Coming of Age Celebrations on Welsh Landed Estates
  • Gentry, Culture and Society, c.1770-1920
  • Shaun Evans
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • The first comprehensive study of gentry coming of age celebrations, offering insights into the social and cultural dynamics of estate communities in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Wales.

    "Coming of age" celebrations were landmark events in the annals of gentry families and for local society, marking the occasion when the heir or heiress to an estate attained their majority at the age of twenty-one, with an assumption that they would eventually inherit the land together with all the privileges and responsibilities attached to its proprietorship. Hundreds of these lively dynastic occasions were celebrated in Wales from the late eighteenth through the "long" nineteenth century, involving masses of participants in an array of public festivities; they provide fascinating evidence for understanding the social and cultural dynamics of estate communities in a rapidly changing environment.

    This book provides the first comprehensive study of these events, examining their development, purpose and significance. It considers the role that gentry and aristocracy played in their communities, why landed estates were an integral part of Welsh society, and how they contributed to the character and experience of place, landscape and landowner-tenant relations. Overall, it offers a reassessment of still-prevalent interpretations of an anglicised, alien and absentee landowning elite bearing no connection with or consideration for Welsh communities, culture and consciousness in the two centuries prior to the mass sale and breakup of their country houses and estates in the early-mid twentieth century.

New Medieval Literatures 25
  • Edited by Laura Ashe, Philip Knox, Caroline Batten, Wendy Scase
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • This volume continues the series' engagement with intellectual and cultural pluralism in the Middle Ages, showing the best new work in the field.

    Essays in this volume deal with texts from the ninth to the fifteenth century and include some unexpected comparisons with British Romanticism. Great attention is paid to manuscripts in their contexts and situations of production: thirteenth-century mortuary rolls are examined as sites of fluidly variegated scribal training and practice, revealing a "scriptscape" of social networks spread across the country. Elsewhere, close analysis of manuscripts known to have belonged to Henry Despenser, bishop of Norwich (1370-1406) makes the case for an effective scribal atelier in the city, presided over by the "Despenser Master". Three essays are linked by a consideration of didactic writing: the Old English translation of Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care is analysed both textually and paleographically for what it reveals about grammatical study in England's early Middle Ages, and the moral freighting of that learning; a comparative analysis of multilingual retellings of sheep fables making an important contribution to animal studies; and recent, violent historical events are shown to have been reshaped into a parable for the instruction of wives in the Mesnagier de Paris. Finally, Gower's expansive geographical and genealogical imaginary in the Confessio Amantis reveals the impossibility of controlling the affordances of his multivalent "East"; while the Alliterative Morte Arthur is newly examined for its representation of mountains and mountaineering as sites of active moral allegory and spiritual importance, as well as real-world experiences of beauty and danger.

Feminist Anger in German-Language Cultural Production
  • Responses to Racism, Misogyny, and Other Injustice
  • Edited by Julia K. Gruber, Regina Range
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Essays by feminist scholars of German Studies looking at how women-particularly women of color-have put their anger to use in German-language cultural production and how they themselves might do so in their scholarship.

    In Germany and in Western culture more broadly, women experience anger in response to misogyny, racism, and other injustice, but open expression of that anger is often considered unwomanly. Yet a rich tradition of feminist thinkers of color-including Audre Lorde, Brittney Cooper, Amia Srinivasan, and Sara Ahmed-understands anger as energizing and imperative for structural change. How might we cultivate an anger that is affirming, inclusive, legitimate, creative, animating, and most of all, feminist?

    This volume of essays by feminist scholars of German Studies-writing in dialogue with such thinkers while acknowledging their own largely white, privileged positionalities-looks at how women have put their anger to use in German-language cultural production and how they themselves might do so in their scholarship. The eleven contributions approach the topic of female anger intersectionally and transnationally. They examine angry women in the contexts of politics, activism, philosophy, economics, race, nationality, sexuality, illness, and humour. Covering a wide array of genres and discussing works from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries, they explore creators including writers, filmmakers, comedian/activists, musicians, and journalists. They investigate the tensions between the emotion of anger and the practice of being an angry woman, global responses to anger, and artistic representations of angry women in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

Anglo-Norman Studies XLVII
  • Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2024
  • Edited by Mark Hagger
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • "A series which is a model of its kind": Edmund King

    The articles collected here demonstrate the range and vitality of current work on the Anglo-Norman period. Writers and writing form an important strand, with analyses of the work and contribution of Peter the Deacon; the portrayal of Harold and Tostig Godwinson and William the Conqueror in Old Norse sagas; the forging of charters in the twelfth century; the production of charters in Oxfordshire in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; and what the career of Baldwin of Bury St Edmunds tells us about the production of diplomas during the reign of Edward the Confessor. The volume also includes articles on the relationship between Bishop Odo of Bayeux and Abbot Scolland of St Augustine's Canterbury; the rise and fall of Old Sarum as a centre of Anglo-Norman power; Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury, Pope Clement III and the papal crisis of 1088; the career of Eudo Dapifer and his foundation of St John's abbey in Colchester; the Augustinians in Britain and Normandy c. 1100-c. 1215; and the activities of papal judges-delegate during the reign of King Stephen.

Sir Tristrem
  • Study, Text, Translation
  • Edited and translated by Thomas H. Crofts
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • A vibrant revival of a neglected witty and daring medieval gem, and a foundational work for English romance and translation studies. Essential reading for students of medieval literature and manuscript culture.

    In the late thirteenth century, as English began to assert itself against Anglo-Norman and French literary traditions, Sir Tristrem emerged as one of the earliest and most inventive Middle English romances. Uniquely preserved in the Auchinleck Manuscript, this poem reimagines the Tristan legend with a bold comic tone, distinctive stanza form, and a sharp awareness of its audience's expectations. Both a translation and a transformation of Thomas of Britain's Tristran (c.1170), it stands alongside the more courtly German and Norwegian retellings by Gottfried von Strassburg and Brother Robert of Norway-yet diverges from both in its brevity, tonal shifts, and performative agility.

    This edition pairs a lively modern English verse translation with the complete Middle English text-offering, for the first time, a dual-language format that remains sensitive to the poem's performance-driven origins. The accompanying study reconsiders Sir Tristrem not only as literature, but as a document of transmission: oral, scribal, and manuscript. It explores its triangulated relationship with other Tristan traditions, its place within a manuscript collection of romances shaped by translation, and the formal innovations through which it reshapes a familiar narrative.

    Resisting the reductive labels of its critical past, Sir Tristrem, as presented here, reclaims its role as a serious, playful, and quintessentially English contribution to medieval narrative tradition.

Ecology and German Realism
  • Poetics, Politics, and the Conquest of Nature
  • Alexander Robert Phillips
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Shows, contrary to the traditional view, that the major authors of German literary realism not only thematized environmental transformation but that it was central to their aesthetics.

    In nineteenth-century Europe, and particularly in Germany, the industrial revolution led to air and water pollution, urban and industrial sprawl, and the physical reconstitution of natural landscapes. This book investigates the relationship between environmental degradation and German Realist aesthetics, challenging a longstanding argument in the scholarship that German Realism largely occluded urban and industrial realities by demonstrating that its major authors-Adalbert Stifter, Wilhelm Raabe, Theodor Storm, and Theodor Fontane-not only thematized environmental matters, but that environmental transformation became the very condition for their texts' reflections on the aesthetic representation of reality.

    German Realist aesthetics in this sense are thus inseparable from environmental aesthetics. Environmental aesthetics, in turn, are inseparable from environmental politics, connected as they are to problems such as the loss of individual livelihoods, displacement of communities, and the legal and ethical standing of animals, plants and landscapes. By exploring how these problems appear in the fiction of the period, Alexander Phillips's book situates the literature in a longer genealogy of environmentalism and ecological aesthetics beyond Germany. That genealogy includes the early twentieth-century "Nature Fakers" debate in the United States, twentieth-century nature writing and contemporary ecocritical theory.

Apartheid, Thought Crime and South Africa’s New Left
  • The Politics of Intellectual Repression
  • Allison Drew
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Of all the groups charged in the early 1960s under apartheid security laws in South Africa, the National Liberation Front was the only one whose members did not engage in violence. Yet six months after its launch, its founding members were arrested and then sentenced to between five and ten years in prison. Why?

    A Cape Peninsula offshoot of the Non-European Unity Movement, the NLF was explicitly socialist and part of the long 1960s New Left. Although the NLF challenged South Africa's racial and capitalist orders, it has scarcely appeared in the liberation movement historiography. This book recovers the NLF's lost history, tracing its perspectives on colonialism, apartheid, political education and guerrilla struggle. The book examines the NLF in its international and national contexts, exploring its relationships with both the transnational New Left and the South African left, and evaluating the conditions producing and then smashing South Africa's New Left.

    Debates about apartheid focus on race, political economy, and state and institutions. But apartheid also strove to control thought through unequal education and censorship. While bringing the NLF's critique of racial capitalism to life, the book also uncovers the NLF's unique educational approach and the state's attempt to contain its thinking.

Catholic Nobles and the Elizabethan State, 1558–1588
  • Northern Affinities and the Politics of Religion
  • Wilfred Hammond
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • A vivid exploration of how Catholicism endured far longer into the Elizabethan era and continued to shape the very identity of early modern England.

    This compelling study delves into the complexities of religious and political power during Elizabeth I's reign, presenting a further, important challenge to the traditional narratives of a swift and uncontested Protestant triumph. Here, Wilfred Hammond explores why Catholic aristocrats, despite wielding significant regional power and Court influence, failed to block or reverse the emerging religious revolution.

    Focusing on the Stanley earls of Derby, the dominant noble family in Lancashire - a county described by the Elizabethan government as "the very sink of popery" - the author reconstructs their role in obstructing Protestant reform. Using the State and Cecil Papers, as well as foreign ambassadorial reports , the study re-evaluates the Stuart party-building efforts of Lady Margaret Douglas and Mary, Queen of Scots. Hammond re-examines the context of the papal bull of deposition, and uncovers the Stanley-Gerard conspiracy of 1570 with its links to the Ridolfi Plot.

    This richly detailed analysis of the Stanleys positions them at the heart of a network of nobles, including the Percies and Nevilles, who were opposed to the religious change presented by Protestantism. As such, this vibrant case-study unfolds to offer fresh insights into the slow, fraught transformation of England's religious landscape during one of its most turbulent periods.

Meditation, Invention, and Designing Thought in the Augustinian Middle Ages
  • Mary J Carruthers
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • A fresh perspective on how early scholars perceived the cosmos and the nature of knowledge through a tour-de-force study of the central role geometry played in medieval creativity.

    Geometry, rhetoric and creativity were intricately linked in medieval thought. Early thinkers integrated mathematical and linguistic frameworks in their attempts to understand both divine and human creation with geometry providing the means through which these scholars tackled everything from theological speculation to the medieval art of "Invention".

    Through detailed explorations of the works of figures such as Augustine, Calcidius and Cassiodorus, this book reveals how medieval thinkers conceptualized beginnings-not as fixed points but as unfolding processes with metaphors of weaving, mapping and journeying reflecting how these scholars navigated the act of creation, whether that terrestrial or cosmological.

    Engaging with philosophy, theology and intellectual history, this work offers fresh insights into how medieval minds reconciled the limits of human understanding with the vast complexity of the universe. In doing so, it challenges modern assumptions about the separation of mathematical and linguistic thinking, demonstrating the dynamic, process-oriented nature of medieval ideas about the mind and the procedures of thinking.

Convention and the Individual in Medieval English Romance
  • Lucy Brookes
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Offers a nuanced reading of character and subjectivity in medieval romance via an exploration of its conventions.

    Medieval romances can be characterised by their formulaic motifs, predictable plots, and "stock" figures and character types. This book offers a fresh perspective on these conventions, arguing that authors used them, and the expectations they generate, as a form of shorthand to interiority. Understanding romance conventions in this way reveals that romance characters' complex and often contradictory inner lives are made available precisely through the genre's narrative structures, shapes, and norms. Drawing upon recent work in the History of Emotions and Affect Theory, the author explores character and subjectivity in a variety of English romance texts from 1100 to 1500 - such as Amis and Amiloun, Le Bone Florence of Rome, The Squire of Low Degree, Sir Orfeo, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Malory's Le Morte Darthur. Through new readings of these texts, the book demonstrates the contribution made by romance to the growing significance of the individual in fiction after the twelfth century by paying particular attention to the ways in which convention, expectation, and genre intersect with character-formation and the representation of identity.

Page 434 of 68884