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604226 results in Series

Page 177 of 30212

Scottish Witchcraft Narratives and Tracts
  • Edited by Julian Goodare
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • This book is a scholarly edition of primary sources for witch-hunting and demonic possession in Scotland. It contains narratives of remarkable witchcraft prosecutions, and tracts expounding witchcraft theory.

    The narratives provide the intense emotional drama, eye-catching colour and nightmarish horror that made witchcraft such a compelling idea. The accused witches' own voices are sometimes heard, under the harrowing circumstances of interrogation under torture. Meanwhile, educated ministers and lawyers develop their theoretical ideas about witches and the Devil. Not every theorist agrees with the prosecutions, and doubts arise that would eventually lead witch-hunting to lose its credibility. The book's most detailed narrative concerns the Bargarran witches of 1697, in which seven witches were executed for the demonic possession of the 11-year-old Christian Shaw. The book shows how this was connected with the sensational witchcraft panic in 1692 at Salem, Massachusetts.

Animal Symbolism in Hispanic Literature
  • From the Sixteenth Century to the Present Day
  • Edited by Lauren Beck, Ailén Cruz, Samantha Ruckenstein
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Whether unicorns, phoenix, and chimera, or axolotl, jaguars, and giant snakes, animals have often had the human experience grafted onto them, in a conscious or unconscious reflection of a society's beliefs, ambitions, and inequalities.

    This volume seeks to explore different representations of real and imaginary animals across Hispanic literary production from the early modern era to the present day in order to gain a better understanding of how they serve as projections of human identities, knowledge, values, and vices. How do beasts enable the colonizing gaze and its reaches? How might beasts offer a means of decolonizing the Hispanophone world? And how do beasts articulate social unrest and a desire to resist inequality, poverty, and other ills of the modern world that collectively reinforce the status quo?

    Working to better understand how Spanish and Latin American authors, illustrators, and graphic artists have understood animals and beasts, and how they interacted with them, contributors from the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Spain shed light on the use of animals as symbols and emblems, as well as how they have been employed to construct others as monstrous and less human.

Vikings in Early Medieval Ireland
  • Church-Raiding, Politics and Kingship
  • Colmán Etchingham
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Illuminates the dynamics of church raiding by Vikings in Ireland, relating this phenomenon to their wider objectives and political ambitions.

    This book offers the first comprehensive investigation of Viking raids on Irish churches from the late eighth to the early eleventh century, drawing on a wide range of sources, including Irish legal and literary material, archaeological and historical evidence and English and Frankish chronicles. Through a rigorous quantitative analysis of annalistic evidence, it sheds light on all aspects of this phenomenon: its chronological development, geographical distribution, immediate purpose and the broader context of Viking engagement with Gaelic Irish royal polities. Challenging the view that such raiding was merely a precursor to settlement and trade, it demonstrates that these attacks remained intrinsic to Viking activities throughout this period; it argues in particular that human captives-rather than metalwork or bullion-constituted the primary objective of church raids, with many held for ransom or sold into slavery. By tracing the evolution of random raids to strategically motivated attacks, it establishes church raiding as a deliberate instrument of political strategy, until the Battle of Clontarf (1014) marked a turning point in Viking-Irish relations.

Criminal Justice and Peace-making in Early Modern Italy
  • Governing Hatred, c.1500-c.1700
  • Paolo Broggio
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • An exceptional study of private peace pacts in early modern Italy that challenges earlier notions of the place of these private agreements in the development of the courts and state.

    Private settlements were among the most prominent yet least conspicuous aspects of justice in early modern Europe. Traditionally seen as incompatible with our notions of judicial modernity, these settlements reflected a deeply ingrained culture of negotiation and transaction-one that often viewed resolution by litigation with extreme scepticism. However, rather than existing in opposition to sovereign justice, this practice of private settlement coexisted with the implacable authority of rulers who alternated between exemplary punishments and royal pardons to maintain social harmony.

    In this English translation of his seminal study, Governare l'odio. Pace e giustizia criminale nell'Italia moderna (secoli XVI-XVII), Paolo Broggio shows how private settlements were far from being a purely benevolent mechanism of reconciliation, often carrying unsettling similarities to institutional coercion and even acts of revenge. Judicial authorities are revealed as not only tolerating these private agreements but shown to have actively facilitated and manipulated them as a means of exerting their control within a community. Religious justifications further lent these agreements a veneer of moral obligation, masking the underlying pressures at play. Through detailed examples such as proceedings in the Papal States, Broggio explores how courts encouraged settlements not only to manage caseloads but to also reinforce existing social hierarchies and power structures.

    This expansive study re-examines the role of peace settlements in early modern justice, revealing them as a fundamental yet coercive tool of governance rather than a simple, private, alternative to judicial authority.

Weird Music: Reading John Ireland and Arthur Machen
  • Eric McElroy
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Using John Ireland's fascination with Arthur Machen as case study, this book challenges our perception of the correspondence between music and literature in twentieth-century Britain.

    The composer John Ireland (1879-1962) declared repeatedly that no one could understand his music until they had first read the work of his favourite writer, Arthur Machen (1863-1947). This book is the first study to take Ireland at his word. Revolving around Machen's classification as a founding figure of 'weird fiction', it uses weird aesthetics as an interpretative lens with which to understand Ireland's notoriously cryptic life and music. Its four chapters deal respectively with Machen's and Ireland's parallel experience of fin-de-siècle London; with their engagement with the English pastoral tradition; with their explorations of weird art's relationship with eroticism; and with unsettling implications of alternative historiography.

    The resulting portrait reveals Ireland to be one of Britain's pre-eminent 'weird artists', placing Ireland in the aesthetic context with which he wished to be associated. It therefore fills a significant gap in British musicology, while at the same time contributing to a growing appreciation of Machen as a major figure in British culture, one whose influence exceeds far beyond the literary sphere to which he is traditionally confined. Using Ireland's fascination with Machen as its case study, this book makes a timely and necessary connection between the literary weird and its musical doppelgänger, enriching and challenging our perception of the correspondence between music and literature in twentieth-century Britain.

Charlemagne in the Francophone World and Occitania
  • Edited by Philip E Bennett, Marianne Ailes
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Explores the transmission and reception of the medieval legends of Charlemagne in the literatures of the French-speaking areas of France, Burgundy and England, and Occitania.

    The spread of Charlemagne's myth after his death was even more extensive than the empire he ruled during his life. This volume turns to the birthplace of many of these myths, and to the languages of the North (langue d'oïl) and South (langue d'oc) of that land. The first chapter traces the presence and development of his legend the diverse political and cultural areas south of the Loire generally known as Occitania. The two following chapters analyse the often contradictory representations of Charlemagne in northern French-speaking regions in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, through a careful selection of chansons de geste and chronicles. Using ethnographic theories, they consider his roles as warrior, secular ruler and conduit to the divine. The fourth and fifth chapters examine the exploitation of those images among readers of French in England and in French-speaking provinces ruled by the Dukes of Burgundy. Finally, the epilogue traces the continued vibrancy of Charlemagne stories in popular and high culture through to the twentieth century.

Textiles and Textile Imagery in Early Medieval English Literature
  • Traditions and Contexts
  • Maren Clegg Hyer
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Identifies and analyses a wide range of textile metaphors and imagery from peace-weaving in Beowulf to word-crafting in Elene.

    Textile metaphors, or metaphors involving the process and product of cloth-making, occur widely in literary traditions around the world. The same phenomenon holds true among the peoples of early medieval England. As close observers of a long and culturally significant textile tradition, pre-Conquest English writers drew upon their close familiarity with spinning and weaving to create a wide range of metaphorical textile images in both Old English and Anglo-Latin literature.

    This book examines early medieval English textile imagery in close detail, situating it within its cultural and material contexts and addressing the ways in which lived experience informed these metaphors, whether inherited, invented, or both. It explores imagery linked to themes of creation, peace, death, magic, and fate in a comprehensive variety of texts, including Beowulf and Elene, Anglo-Latin letters and riddles, the Exeter Book riddles, prognostics, penitentials, hagiographic and homiletic texts, medical collections, and glosses. Overall, it demonstrates how an understanding of this important body of textile metaphors alters and shapes the ways in which we read the literature of this period.

Skaldic Poetry as Christian Propaganda
  • Honouring Bishop Guðmundr Arason in Fourteenth-Century Iceland
  • Margaret Clunies Ross
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • A detailed literary study of fourteenth-century poetry composed in honour of a controversial thirteenth-century bishop.

    Vernacular poetry was a powerful influence in fourteenth-century Icelandic elite literary culture, even to the extent of providing the means of elevating a local bishop, Guðmundr Arason, to sainthood. Three Icelandic poets, Abbots Arngrímr Brandsson and Árni Jónsson, and Lawman Einarr Gilsson, composed impressive encomia of Guðmundr, with the intention of recording the holy bishop's sanctity in the language of contemporary religious devotion and to persuade Church authorities in both Scandinavia and the wider Christian world to canonize him. While the local campaign ultimately failed to sway the Catholic Church, it did succeed in producing a significant corpus of vernacular religious poetry, unmatched in combining the traditional diction and metres of Old Norse skaldic verse with the vernacular poetics of affective piety and Christian hermeneutics.

    This important group of poems is examined here for the first time as literary works. The manuscript context of the Guðmundr poetry is investigated in the first chapter. The next three chapters offer a detailed analysis of the poems themselves while the final chapters situate the Guðmundr poetry within the milieu of the vernacular learning that flourished particularly in mid-fourteenth-century Icelandic bishoprics and monasteries. They also explore the relationship between contemporary prose sagas of Guðmundr Arason and the poetry composed in his honour, which, it is argued, offers figural interpretations of the substance of the prose texts.

Holst and the Winds
  • A Legacy
  • Jon Ceander Mitchell
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • A detailed exploration of the works for winds by Gustav Holst, the renowned composer of The Planets, aided by musical analysis and rich historical documentation.

    Gustav Holst (1874 - 1934) was an English composer and music educator whose work spanned four decades. Though he remains most widely known for his orchestral suite The Planets, his works for band or wind ensemble are also performed frequently, yet have rarely been studied in such systematic detail. They vary widely in genre (from chamber music to military and brass-band works) and in form (from sonata cycle to suite to symphonic poem).

    As author Jon Mitchell shows, Holst's works for winds give plentiful evidence of the many influences on him, both musical (including Wagnerian romanticism, English folk song, and Baroque polyphony) and nonmusical (e.g., Sanskrit literature, William Morris, and Walt Whitman). The book gives careful attention to these influences and to the evolution of the works through analysis of sketches and full manuscript scores.

    Holst and the Winds makes use of a wide array of primary sources, including Holst's personal papers, written correspondence, programs, and periodical reviews. Music educators, performers, conductors, and anybody who loves Holst's music will enjoy the insights provided herein.

Music in Fifteenth-Century Bohemia
  • Between Reform and Identity Building
  • Edited by Hana Vlhová-Wörner, Jan Ciglbauer
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • A long-needed reassessment of the musical culture of fifteenth-century Bohemia, liberating it from nineteenth- and twentieth-century nationalist agendas and reassessing its position in European music history.

    What was musical culture like in a country in fifteenth-century Central Europe where theologians tried to restore the values of the early church--including through musical practices--only to be branded "heretical"?

    Bohemian theologians tried to return to Christianity's "roots" by promoting frequent bread-and-wine communion for all (including children) and by encouraging lay participation in worship through translations into the vernacular. Unlike in many other European lands, monophonic chant and sacred songs were primarily used (though some advanced contemporary polyphonic settings circulated as well). These religious and musical developments formed part of the seedbed that would develop more fully during the European Reformation through the work of Martin Luther and others.

    Music in Fifteenth-Century Bohemia: Between Reform and Identity Building contains essays on liturgy, song, and the influence of the Hussite movement. The book resists both nationalistically tinged narratives and the marginalization that has long resulted from an emphasis on the disparities between Czech and Western European musical traditions. One chapter demonstrates how a fifteenth-century song was employed in the revival of Czech culture in the nineteenth century.

    Taken as a whole, the essays in this important collection illustrate the distinctive and often effective ways in which fifteenth-century Czech culture dealt with the dichotomy between religious reform and cultural identity.

Science and the Romantic Vision in Early Nineteenth-Century Opera
  • Mark A. Pottinger
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • An interdisciplinary study of how early nineteenth-century science and opera articulated a transnational romantic vision of harmony between self and nature, and how this ideal gave way to mid-century realism and social conflict.

    The end of the Napoleonic era ushered in a transnational outlook for Europe, where the traditional boundaries that separated people, ideas and things were blurred in favour of a unified and cosmopolitan vision for society. The result of this shift created a 'romantic vision', a new way to perceive the imagined potential of the self in correspondence with the infinite reality of the natural world. Early nineteenth-century scientists such as Alexander von Humboldt (earth sciences), Franz Anton Mesmer (mesmerism), Johann Wilhelm Ritter (galvanism) and Frédéric Dubois d'Amiens (hysteria) are explored in this context to see how the romantic vision was reflected in their work and received by society. Seeing opera as a confluence of all the arts and encompassing a similar romantic vision, this book examines three paradigmatic operas that contend with the forces of nature: Weber's Der Freischütz (1821), Meyerbeer's Robert le diable (1831) and Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor (1835). In these three highly successful works from separate operatic traditions, the unseen, inner world of nature reveals a wholeness of the self with the divine, showcasing a healthy optimism for society.

    The book concludes by discussing Gounod's Faust (1859), a work that highlights the struggle of an early-16th-century scientist and places it against the context of the social revolutions of 1848 and the seminal publication of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species in 1859. In this post-1850 era, the potential of the unseen reality of nature is cast aside and replaced with the certainty of the everyday-the violence of man against man, the struggle for power and the destruction of nature itself.

Governance by Emulation
  • The Oversight Board, the Digital Services Act, and the Struggle for Platform Accountability
  • Moritz A. Schramm
  • Published online:
    24 June 2026
    Print publication:
    20 August 2026
  • Social media giants likeMeta and transnational regulators such as the European Union are transforming private governance by creatively emulating public law frameworks. Drawing on exclusive interviews and in-depth analysis of Meta's Oversight Board and the EU's Digital Services Act, this book explores how these approaches blend European and American perspectives, bridging distinct legal traditions to address the challenges of platform governance. Analysis of content moderation practices and their implications uncovers a critical pattern in the evolution of governance for industries that will define the future, from digital platforms to emerging technologies. Combining public and private law in innovative ways, the book sheds light on bold governance experiments that will shape the digital world – for better or worse. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

From the Margins to the Centre in Seventeenth-Century England
  • Essays in Honour of Bernard Capp
  • Edited by Tim Reinke-Williams, Angela McShane
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Collection of essays showcasing how one of the greatest historians of seventeenth-century England has shaped and continues to influence the direction of studies in early modern society, culture and belief.

    This collection of essays showcases how, over an illustrious career spanning more than fifty years, Professor Bernard Capp FBA has shaped and continues to influence the direction of studies in early modern English social and cultural history. Initially influenced by the historiographical agendas set in the 1960s by Christopher Hill and Sir Keith Thomas, over the last five decades Capp has produced important studies of religious radicalism, print culture, gender and sibling relations, the culture wars of the 1650s and the maritime world. Collectively this body of work enabled him not only to recover the experiences of the marginalised, but also to highlight the importance of topics previously deemed (at best) of marginal interest to historians of seventeenth-century England.

    The contributions to this volume, produced by a new generation of historians whose doctoral work Capp supervised and examined, are similarly wide-ranging and innovative. Engaging in dialogue with Capp's work, as well as those he has been in dialogue with himself, the authors provide novel studies of hermits, sailors and surgeons, as well as shedding fresh light on topics such as the politics of the parish, the lives of plebeian women, men's emotions, and the cultural worlds of 'Jane' Shore and John Taylor the Water-Poet. Like Capp, the authors use evidence from legal records, life-writings and cheap printed texts to recover marginalised voices and reconstruct the everyday lives of those overlooked and misunderstood by their contemporaries and by historians. By doing so, they demonstrate how one of the greatest historians of seventeenth-century England continues to inspire the production of innovative studies of early modern society, culture and belief.

    CONTRIBUTORS: Richard Blakemore, Heather Falvey, Jasmine Kilburn-Toppin, Anu Korhonen, Peter Marshall, Angela McShane, Elaine Murphy, Naomi Pullin, Tim Reinke-Williams

Mola, False Conception, and False Pregnancy in British Medicine, 1550–1850
  • Paige Donaghy
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • When reproduction defied certainty, it unsettled medicine, law, and belief. This book reveals how ambiguous pregnancies reshaped knowledge, emotion, and the cultural meaning of conception across centuries.

    Across the long durée of the early-modern period, British medical practitioners and society at large were preoccupied with the elusive phenomenon of "false generation"-a term encompassing false conceptions, molae, moles, and spurious pregnancies. These non-foetal pregnancies, often indistinguishable from true gestations, generated profound uncertainty in medical, legal, and theological thought. Drawing on sources ranging from anatomical treatises and midwifery manuals to women's letters, diaries, and court records, Donaghy traces how false generation shaped reproductive knowledge and understandings of the embodied experience. Through case studies such as Mary I and Joanna Southcott, the book highlights how reproductive ambiguity was not merely a private ordeal but a public and intellectual crisis. Engaging with figures like Galen, Jean Fernel, François Valleriola, and Frederik Ruysch, the book situates British debates within wider contemporaneous European contexts as well as a transhistorical development of medical knowledge.

    By foregrounding uncertainty as both an emotional and conceptual force, this monograph contributes to the history of emotions, knowledge, and the body. It offers a field-defining account of how false generation unsettled assumptions about life, conception, and pregnancy, and how these ideas evolved into modern categories such as molar pregnancy. The book speaks directly to current debates in reproductive justice and healthcare, while presenting a compelling case for the historical contingency of reproductive knowledge and the diverse ways it has been shaped by cultural, scientific, and experiential factors.

German Graphic Narratives and Trauma
  • Edited by Elisabeth Krimmer, Maureen Burdock
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • This volume explores the representation of political, racial, sexual, and environmental trauma in German-language graphic narratives, which has thus far received little scholarly attention.

    In recent decades, as graphic novels have exploded in popularity and have increasingly been engaged with by scholarship, there has been a marked increase in comics that deal with traumatic experiences. These experiences arise variously from warfare, genocide, terrorism, racism, sexual violence, domestic violence, illness, disability, migration, natural disasters, or climate-change, among other causes. Indeed, scholars including Hillary Chute and Gillian Whitlock have argued that graphic narratives are particularly well-suited to portraying traumatic experiences through the lens of individual memories.

    This edited volume builds on the emergent body of work on the representation of trauma in graphic narratives, but focuses exclusively on German-language graphic narratives, whose exploration of trauma has so far received little scholarly attention. Essays dealing with theoretical and conceptual concerns are joined by analyses of individual creators of graphic narratives, including Olivia Vieweg and Volker Reiche. In addition, there are transcribed conversations among the contributors to the graphic story compilation But I Live, Miriam Libicki, Gilad Seliktar, and Barbara Yelin, and between Birgit Weyhe, creator of the graphic narratives Madgermanes and Rude Girl, and the Germanist Priscilla Layne, who is the model for the main character in the latter book. A final essay looks back further with a critical appraisal of the poet Rolf-Dieter Brinkmann's sampling of comics in his late 1960s Popliteratur works.

Thirteenth Century England XIX
  • Proceedings of the Heidelberg Conference, 2023
  • Edited by Jörg Peltzer, Nicholas Vincent
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Essays addressing Anglo-German connections and comparisons across the period from 1190 to 1300, with particular attention to the economic, social and personal aspects of an entangled transregnal connection.

    A wide range of topics are covered in this significant collection. It begins with an examination of macro-economic developments, together with comparative studies of serfdom, and the record-keeping of English and German towns. Personal contacts are the subject of articles on the hostages delivered by Richard the Lionheart following his release from captivity by the Emperor Henry VI, the diplomatic initiatives of 1227, the subsequent marriage of Henry III's sister Isabella with the Emperor Frederick II, Richard of Cornwall's German itinerary, and relations between England and Cologne. Another article investigates what happened if foreigners travelling in England came into conflict with the law. Turning from people to manuscripts, three articles analyse in turn the English reception of Oliver of Cologne's Historia Damiatina, the representation of English kings in Gervase of Tilbury's Otia imperialia, and Matthew Paris's attempts to depict royal emotion.

Migration and Return in Modern African Literature
  • Black Bodies in White Spaces
  • Ernest Cole
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Using close readings of nine novels by African or African-descended novelists, this book examines three phases of African migration: departure, disillusionment and the impulse to return.

    The experiences of African migrants in the diaspora are deeply inflected by the condition of living as Black bodies in white spaces. In this work, author Ernest Cole examines closely the narratives of migration and return presented in nine powerful novels by authors who include Chimamanda Adichie, NoViolet Bulawayo, Teju Cole and others. The novels reveal a reversal of expectations that migrants from Africa experience upon arrival in the West, a reversal prompted in part by the racial prejudice they are confronted with as Black individuals. As the author notes, the novels also illustrate the desire to return to the homeland as a better alternative to the precarious life in the West, even though such a move is not without its complications.

    The study is divided into three parts with seven chapters. The first two chapters deal with the reasons for the departure of migrants from the continent, the next two depict the experiences of migrants in the West, and the last three focus on contemplations of the return journey home. Collectively, the chapters lay out three phases in the migration process: departure from home, disillusionment in the West, and return to the country of origin. Within this framework, the book uses displacement and dislocation to examine a host of themes - social alienation, alterity and the precarity of Africans in the diaspora.

Companion to Latin American Photography
  • Nathanial Gardner
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • How can photography enrich our knowledge of Latin America?

    Photography provides unique insights into Latin America. It acts as a witness, agent, and archive - containing a wealth of knowledge about the continent, its social classes, and its multiple ethnicities. This companion introduces the reader to the role that photography plays in Latin America, offers ways in which it can be studied, and reveals how this medium can promote a deeper awareness of the region.

    It reviews the history of photography in Latin America; ways in which the technology transmits distinctive information; the influence of specific photographers and their relationships with patrons, mentors, and students; the role of institutions in promoting photography; and the developing Latin American canon. The Companion to Latin American Photography also explores how the medium can shape Latin American narratives and cultural identities; assert or question power; serve as testimony and memory; and represent and empower women, children and youth, as well as marginalized groups such as the disappeared.

    The study is intended not only to provide an overview of Latin American photography (including dozens of images from a vast array of photographers over the past two centuries), it also discusses innovative work taking place there. Above all, this book can be viewed as a guide to the ways in which photography can enhance and expand a viewer's knowledge of Latin America.

Women, Transnational Networks and Patriotism in Northern and Central Europe, 1763-1814
  • Nicole Pohl
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • A gateway to the complex world of eighteenth-century sociability of elite women and of their lasting impact on modern concepts of national identity and community.

    In the dynamic intellectual and social landscape of eighteenth-century Northern Europe, the interplay between patriotism, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism was pivotal in shaping the era's cultural and political discourse. This study delves into the intricate networks of elite women who navigated and influenced these concepts through their participation in salons and literary circles. By examining figures such as Anna Amalia of Weimar, Dorothea von Kurland, members of the Bluestockings, Friederike Brun and the grande Dame of eighteenth-century salon world, Mme de Staël, the narrative uncovers how these women fostered transnational dialogues and cultural exchanges that were crucial in redefining public spirit and national identity.

    Grounded in extensive archival research and touching on the lives of over twenty-five individuals, the work highlights the nuanced roles these women played as cultural mediators and agents of change across national borders, challenging the traditional male-dominated historiography. The exploration of their contributions offers fresh insights into the interconnectedness of European intellectual life and the critical role of gender in shaping historical discourses. This book not only broadens our understanding of the Enlightenment but also provides a rich, interdisciplinary perspective on the socio-political transformations of the era.

Women and Magic in Medieval Romance
  • Genre, Intertextuality and Power
  • Jane Elizabeth Bonsall
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Explores the conventions and contradictions inherent in archetypes of magical femininity - from loathly ladies to monstrous mothers - in a range of popular late medieval English romances.

    The female characters in Middle English romances with particular power and agency are often portrayed as supernatural, possessing either magical abilities or identities. This book argues that a genre-focused reading of these supernatural women reveals romance's strategies for working through and articulating anxieties about the changing world of the late medieval period, as well as exposing their contemporary audiences' unexpectedly flexible attitudes toward feminine authority and moral ambiguity.

    It explores five distinct types of magical femininity: the Tristan tradition's marvelously gifted healers; the Muslim princess in Bevis of Hampton; the endlessly wealthy fairy imagined by Sir Launfal and Partonope of Blois; the monster-mother Melusine; and Morgan le Fay, the prototypical witch. By tracking the way each type first establishes then complicates generic patterns, this study highlights the tension between romance's persistent fascination with feminine power, and its simultaneous reiteration of the social and generic bounds on women's agency and authority. Interrogating generic expectations from an intersectional feminist perspective, it makes a case for a recuperative re-reading of romance, one that asks us to revise our assumptions about the potentialities of women's power in the medieval imaginary.

Page 177 of 30212