{"title":"The Punishment of the Jews, Hugh of Lincoln, and the Question of Satire in Chaucer’s Prioress’s Tale","authors":"R. Dahood","doi":"10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.300019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.300019","url":null,"abstract":"This essay, through attention to the drawing and hanging of Jews in the Prioress’s Tale, tests the claim that the tale satirizes the Prioress’s anti-semitism. Section 1 addresses the nature of the punishment, which Chaucerians have questioned, and concludes from linguistic and historical evidence that Middle English drawe means “drag.” Section 2 suggests that the punishment alludes to the drawing and hanging of Lincoln Jews in 1255 for the death of Hugh of Lincoln, whom the Prioress invokes. Section 3 suggests that in view of John of Gaunt’s, Chaucer’s, and other prominent Ricardians’ ties to Lincoln Cathedral, an institution as early as 1235 associated with anti-semitism and the center of Hugh’s cult, the tale is probably not satiric. Section 4 considers in light of medieval English veneration of Hugh the questions of how Chaucer viewed anti-semitism and why English anti-semitism flourished long after 1290, when few Jews remained in England.","PeriodicalId":39588,"journal":{"name":"Viator - Medieval and Renaissance Studies","volume":"152 1","pages":"465-491"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2005-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77396669","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Perceptions of Crusading in the Mid-Fourteenth Century: The Evidence of Three Texts","authors":"N. Housley","doi":"10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.300017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.300017","url":null,"abstract":"Assessing the popularity of crusading becomes more difficult from the mid-thirteenth century, when the age of the great passagia drew to a close. In the Europe of the 1340s and 1350s, embattled by warfare, plague, and economic collapse, it would seem logical to assume that the call to crusade had lost any appeal; yet we know that at the end of the century a significant revival of enthusiasm occurred. Part of the problem is that we possess few sources that reflect reactions to crusading in the 1340s and 1350s. The author examines three texts written during these decades that comment on crusading from very different perspectives: Geoffroi de Charny’s Livre de chevalerie (ca. 1352), Jean de Roquetaillade’s Liber secretorum eventuum (1349), and John Mandeville’s Travels (ca. 1356). He concludes that they reveal a remarkably similar approach. The activity of crusading was viewed in a wholly positive light, but it was seen as the outcome of a process of upheaval, one that would involve at best thoroughgoing ref...","PeriodicalId":39588,"journal":{"name":"Viator - Medieval and Renaissance Studies","volume":"46 1","pages":"415-433"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2005-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78829174","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fictions of Family: The Encomium Emmae Reginae and Virgil’s Aeneid","authors":"E. Tyler","doi":"10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.300008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.300008","url":null,"abstract":"The Encomium Emmae Reginae was written in the early 1040s to support the interests of Queen Emma as the period of Danish rule in England came tumultuously to an end. Its author was probably a Flemish monk from the foundation of Saint-Bertin. Recent scholarship suggests that the Encomiast wrote from within and for the Anglo-Danish court, whose members were intimately familiar with Emma’s role in the complex dynastic politics of the Anglo-Danish period. This article considers the impact of writing in this context for the Encomiast’s understanding of his text as historiography and argues that he uses Virgil’s Aeneid, and the tradition of commentaries on this text, to explore the nature of fiction and history. The terms of his exploration are sophisticated and reveal that he was working in an intellectual climate which would, in the twelfth century, begin to produce coherent conceptual arguments for the truth of made-up fictions.","PeriodicalId":39588,"journal":{"name":"Viator - Medieval and Renaissance Studies","volume":"54 5 1","pages":"149-179"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2005-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77391991","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A New Gloss on Hildegard of Bingen’s Lingua ignota","authors":"J. Green","doi":"10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.300011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.300011","url":null,"abstract":"A New Gloss on Hildegard of Bingen’s Lingua ignota. JONATHAN P. GREEN. Among the most enigmatic works of the abbess and visionary Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) is the Lingua ignota, a list of just over 1,000 nonce words with glosses in Latin and/or German. Earlier understanding of the Lingua ignota as glossolalia or as cryptography have proven unsustainable, and attempts to analyze the glossary via etymology have had limited success. Hildegard and her contemporaries regarded the Lingua ignota not as a clever or useful invention, but rather as no less supernatural than her visionary works. The glossary of an unknown language reinforced Hildegard’s prophetic authority, particularly on linguistic questions. This article suggests that the Lingua ignota represents not just a means to compensate for Hildegard’s position with respect to Latin as the language of institutionalized learning, but specifically a reaction to her confrontation with traces of Greek in macaronic poetry such as that found in the librari...","PeriodicalId":39588,"journal":{"name":"Viator - Medieval and Renaissance Studies","volume":"32 1","pages":"217-234"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2005-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79100711","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Chaucer's 'To His Purse': Begging, or Begging Off?","authors":"R. F. Yeager","doi":"10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.300016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.300016","url":null,"abstract":"Chaucer’s “To His Purse”: Begging, or Begging Off? R. F. YEAGER. The short “Complaint of Chaucer to His Purse” has received attention formally as the origin of the “begging poem” genre in English, and historically as the only evidence of Chaucer’s acceptance of the usurpation of Henry IV. Both lines of assessment converge, in that, as the traditional readings have it, Chaucer was in dire financial straits in 1399, and wrote the new ruler a clever bit of flattery, ultimately restating Henry’s own various claims to the crown, for which he was rewarded monetarily. This article argues that, on the contrary, far from acquiescing to the Lancastrian take-over, Chaucer put “To His Purse” together under some duress from Henry’s court, which, in order to bolster its tenuous claims, demonstrably sought supportive expressions from important literary figures including Gower and Christine de Pisan; that Chaucer was not in serious debt in 1399; that it is highly possible all of “To His Purse” except the envoy was writte...","PeriodicalId":39588,"journal":{"name":"Viator - Medieval and Renaissance Studies","volume":"8 1","pages":"373-414"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2005-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91163298","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Taking a stand : The spatial factor in vocal polyphony of the late medieval era","authors":"Kevin N. Moll","doi":"10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.300021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.300021","url":null,"abstract":"Assuming the spatial aspect of sound to have been potentially a material concern to medieval musicians, this study explores the issue of relative physical placement of the performers in vocal polyphony as it was practiced from the mid-thirteenth through the mid-fifteenth centuries. Proceeding from an analysis of voice-part formatting in selected representative codices, the study points out the pronounced consistencies that exist in the folio format of the manuscripts consulted, which span a period of nearly 200 years. This result points to there having been only a limited number of normative voice-part dispositions, which themselves arguably correlate with the acoustical properties and contrapuntal functions of voice types in various musical styles. This evidence indicates that conventions of performers’ placement did in fact exist throughout the late medieval era, and that a conscious attempt was being made to effect, through spatial means, a clear projection of voice functions in counterpoint.","PeriodicalId":39588,"journal":{"name":"Viator - Medieval and Renaissance Studies","volume":"11 1","pages":"531-556"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2005-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84334222","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Changing Times in the Cultural Discourse of Late Medieval England","authors":"K. Smyth","doi":"10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.300205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.300205","url":null,"abstract":"The author reassesses critical assumptions concerning ways to read time perceptions in the Middle Ages. A comprehensive synthesis of existing scholarship is offered as a means to scrutinize the multiple methods used by modern commentators and as a means to demonstrate the complexity and interconnectivity of cultural discourse in the medieval period. An integration of specialist approaches results in an essay with a wide coverage of primary sources. The focus on English examples— with close readings of how literary texts, religious writings, church records, legal documents, chronicles, letters, the computus genre, and the role of mnemonics— reveals the multiplicity of ways by which collective and individual attitudes towards time are instilled, communicated, explored, developed, confused, and at times subverted, in cultural discourse. This reading of timepieces as cultural narratives offers a new dimension in the study of medieval expressions of time. The essay also indicates possible directions for future...","PeriodicalId":39588,"journal":{"name":"Viator - Medieval and Renaissance Studies","volume":"92 22 1","pages":"435-454"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2004-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81265921","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Chaucer, Spain, and the Prioress's Antisemitism","authors":"Lawrence L. Besserman","doi":"10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.300202","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.300202","url":null,"abstract":"The goal of the present essay is to demonstrate how unlikely it would have been for Chaucer to have subscribed to the antisemitic views depicted in the Prioress’s Tale. The demonstration consists of three sections. The first section takes a fresh look at textual clues in the fictional response to the Prioress’s Tale within the Canterbury Tales. The second section adduces neglected evidence of intersections between Chaucer’s diplomatic and court-related career and the careers of prominent contemporary Jews in Spain, and also in Anglo-Spanish relations, from the 1360s to the 1390s. The third section examines Chaucer’s surprisingly favorable depictions of Jews in two passages, one from the House of Fame and one from the Prologue to the Treatise on the Astrolabe. These two passages are routinely neglected by commentators on Chaucer’s attitude toward Jews, an attitude too often presumed to be the same as that expressed in the Prioress’s Tale.","PeriodicalId":39588,"journal":{"name":"Viator - Medieval and Renaissance Studies","volume":"108 1","pages":"329-354"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2004-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82481571","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Establishment of New Units of Production in Carolingian Times: Making Early Medieval Sources Relevant for Environmental History","authors":"Christoph Sonnlechner","doi":"10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.300191","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.300191","url":null,"abstract":"Medievalists have been arguing for decades about the consequences of changes in agrarian structures as they can be seen in documents from the early Middle Ages. This article approaches the topic from the point of view of environmental history. Processes of transformation referring to land organization and land use between 700 and 900 in continental Europe are the focus of this study. Identifying the role of the Carolingians in the purported processes of changing agro-ecosystems is another. Two regions which were integrated into the Carolingian empire in the course of the eighth century, Bavaria and Provence, form the basis of a comparative approach to find out more about the relation between society and nature. A closer look at the sources, source criticism, and terminological analysis make it possible to recognize a more direct influence of the Carolingians on changes in agrarian structures of production than seen in recent years.","PeriodicalId":39588,"journal":{"name":"Viator - Medieval and Renaissance Studies","volume":"31 1","pages":"21-48"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2004-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89874428","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Women and Humanism: Nine Factors for the Woman Learning","authors":"H. Parker","doi":"10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.300211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.300211","url":null,"abstract":"This article attempts a survey of the phenomenon of the learned woman in the Renaissance to 1600. It singles out and examines nine factors that increased the possibility of a girl receiving a humanist education; each modifies the notion of humanism exclusively as preparation for men in public life: 1) It helped to be royal. 2) It helped to be noble. 3) It helped to be magnificent. 4) It helped to be at court. 5) It helped to have a humanist father. 6) It helped to have a brother. 7) It helped to have parents who believed in the moral value of humanitas. 8) It helped to be Protestant. 9) It helped to love learning.","PeriodicalId":39588,"journal":{"name":"Viator - Medieval and Renaissance Studies","volume":"589 1","pages":"581-616"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2004-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76595350","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}