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A monster lurks at the heart of medieval identity, and this book seeks him out. Reading a set of medieval texts in which giants and dismemberment figure prominently, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen brings a critical psychoanalytic perspective to bear on the question of identity formation-particularly masculine identity-in narrative representation. This is a compelling inquiry into the phenomenon of giants and giant-slaying in various texts from the Anglo-Saxon period to late Middle English, including Beowulf, several works by Chaucer, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Beowulf, like The Iliad and The Odyssey, is a foundational work of Western literature that originated in mysterious circumstances. In The Transmission of Beowulf, Leonard Neidorf addresses philological questions that are fundamental to the study of the poem. Is Beowulf the product of unitary or composite authorship? How substantially did scribes alter the text during its transmission, and how much time elapsed between composition and preservation? Neidorf answers these questions by distinguishing linguistic and metrical regularities, which originate with the Beowulf poet, from patterns of textual corruption, which descend from copyists involved in the poem’s transmission. He argues, on the basis of archaic features that pervade Beowulf and set it apart from other Old English poems, that the text preserved in the sole extant manuscript (ca. 1000) is essentially the work of one poet who composed it circa 700. Of course, during the poem’s written transmission, several hundred scribal errors crept into its text. These errors are interpreted in the central chapters of the book as valuable evidence for language history, cultural change, and scribal practice. Neidorf’s analysis reveals that the scribes earnestly attempted to standardize and modernize the text’s orthography, but their unfamiliarity with obsolete words and ancient heroes resulted in frequent errors. The Beowulf manuscript thus emerges from his study as an indispensible witness to processes of linguistic and cultural change that took place in England between the eighth and eleventh centuries. An appendix addresses J. R. R. Tolkien’s Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, which was published in 2014. Neidorf assesses Tolkien’s general views on the transmission of Beowulf and evaluates his position on various textual issues.

This wide-ranging study of language and cultural change in fourteenth-century England argues that the influence of oral tradition is much more important to the advance of literacy than previously supposed. In contrast to the view of orality and literacy as opposing forces, the book maintains that the power of language consists in displacement, the capacity of one channel of language to take the place of the other, to make the source disappear into the copy. Appreciating the interplay between oral and written language makes possible for the first time a way of understanding the high literate achievements of this century in relation to momentous developments in social and political life.

Until now, scholarly analysis of Elizabethan processions has always regarded them as having been successful in their function as propaganda, and has always found them to have effectively 'won over' the common people - that group of the population at whom they were chiefly aimed. Both her Royal entries and progresses were regarded as effective public relations exercises, the population gaining access to the Queen and thus being encouraged to remain loyal subjects. This book represents a new approach to this subject by investigating whether this was actually the case - that is, whether the common people were actually won over by these spectacular rituals. By examining original documents that have thus far been ignored, as well as re-examining others from the perspective of the common people, the book casts a new light on Elizabethan processions. Contents: Introduction: 'Triumphal processions'; Theorising processions; 'Her spiritual, mystical, transforming power': Elizabeth on procession and the common audience; 'Tyme hath brought me hether': readings of Elizabeth on procession; Conclusion: 'The true picture of the past flits by': re-reading a procession painting; Appendices; Bibliography; Index. William Leahy is Director of Studies in the Department of English at Brunel University, UK.

Wonderfully written and beautifully presented , The Outlaws of Medieval Legend brings the popular heroes of the Middle-Ages to life. Featuring both famous - Robin Hood and William Wallace - and now forgotten rogues such as Gamelyn and Fulke Fitzwarin, this book explains the popularity of these semi-mythical figures, and how their stories appealed to the common people of the Middle Ages.Long unavailable, and now featuring a new introduction from the author, this is the perfect book for anyone with a fondness for medieval history and folklore.