The Medieval Python

'Troilus and Criseyde', Geoffrey Chaucer's most substantial completed work, is a long historical romance; its famous tale of love and betrayal in the Trojan War later inspired William Shakespeare. This reader's guide, written specifically for students of medieval literature, provides a scene-by-scene paraphrase and commentary on the whole text. Each section explains matters of meaning, interpretation, plot structure and character development, the role of the first-person narrating voice, Chaucer's use of his source materials and elements of the poem's style. Brief and accessible discussions of key themes and sources (for example the art of love, the holy bond of things, Fortune and Thebes) are provided in separate textboxes. An ideal starting point for studying the text, this book helps students through the initial language barrier and allows readers to enjoy and understand this medieval masterpiece.

This book analyses the laws that shaped modern European empires from medieval times to the twentieth century. Its geographical scope is global, including the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and the Poles. Andrew Fitzmaurice focuses upon the use of the law of occupation to justify and critique the appropriation of territory. He examines both discussions of occupation by theologians, philosophers and jurists, as well as its application by colonial publicists and settlers themselves. Beginning with the medieval revival of Roman law, this study reveals the evolution of arguments concerning the right to occupy through the School of Salamanca, the foundation of American colonies, seventeenth-century natural law theories, Enlightenment philosophers, eighteenth-century American colonies and the new American republic, writings of nineteenth-century jurists, debates over the carve up of Africa, twentieth-century discussions of the status of Polar territories, and the period of decoloni

This book analyses the laws that shaped modern European empires from medieval times to the twentieth century. Its geographical scope is global, including the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and the Poles. Andrew Fitzmaurice focuses upon the use of the law of occupation to justify and critique the appropriation of territory. He examines both discussions of occupation by theologians, philosophers and jurists, as well as its application by colonial publicists and settlers themselves. Beginning with the medieval revival of Roman law, this study reveals the evolution of arguments concerning the right to occupy through the School of Salamanca, the foundation of American colonies, seventeenth-century natural law theories, Enlightenment philosophers, eighteenth-century American colonies and the new American republic, writings of nineteenth-century jurists, debates over the carve up of Africa, twentieth-century discussions of the status of Polar territories, and the period of decoloni

Chaucer's Legend of Good Women is a testament to the disparate views of women prevalent in the Middle Ages. Dr Percival contends that the complex medieval notion of Woman informs the structure of the poem: in the Prologue Chaucer praises conventional ideas of female virtue, while in the Legends he demonstrates a humorous scepticism, apparently influenced by a contemporary antifeminist tradition. The debate Chaucer thus promotes could be relied on to entertain many medieval readers, at the same time that it demonstrates the power of the vernacular translator/poet to handle language wittily and to do just as he pleases with the august texts of the past. This is a comprehensive account of the Legend's interpretative puzzles, which does not ignore the element of political writing, and adds to a close and nuanced reading of the text an examination of literary, historical, and social contexts.

First published in 1933 as part of the Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought series, Coulton's Scottish Abbeys and Social Life was an expanded version of his Rhind Lectures given to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1931. Although a rigorous academic, who stressed the importance of using primary sources, Coulton was skilled at making medieval history accessible to a wider audience. He played an important role in encouraging interest in the study of social and economic, rather than political and military, history of the Middle Ages among younger scholars. In the present work, he used his wide reading of the evidence to examine how monasticism developed in Scotland, from the early Celtic period to the Reformation. Much of the material reveals a complex relationship between the monks of the various orders and the world in which they lived, and teaches the reader about the Church and Scottish society.

Studies in Church Life in England under Edward III was first published in 1934 as part of the Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought series. Wood-Legh has chosen five topics of church history which frequently occur in the Patent Rolls of Edward III. Chancery documents were valuable sources of information on aspects of the medieval church, but had seldom been systematically studied by church historians before this. The five essays cover royal administration of religious houses, the visitation of hospitals, the application of the Statute of Mortmain, chantry chapels, and the appropriation of parish churches by religious houses. All of these topics are then related to three themes, public opinion of the church, the effects of the Black Death on the church, and the relationship between the church and central government. The book is a splendid example of how administrative sources can shed light on all aspects of history.

Planning your trip to Croatia? Look no further.Whether you want to walk the medieval walls of scene-stealing Dubrovnik, sail from one idyllic island to another, or café-hop around artsy Zagreb, your D

In this second volume of his essays on the history of halakhah, Haym Soloveitchik grapples with much-disputed topics in medieval Jewish history and takes issue with a number of reigning views. His ins

In late medieval and early modern Europe, definitions of blood in medical writing were slippery and changeable: blood was at once the red fluid in human veins, a humor, a substance governing crucial G

Keenley Turnshoe is a young apprentice cleric living in Utoptia, a medieval-like fantasy world of magic and monsters. But unknown to Keenley and the other inhabitants of Utopia, their world is also th

Stamford has a reputation for being one of England's finest stone towns. It is a happy mix of medieval and Georgian architecture that was untouched by the Industrial Revolution or later large scale de

This book is a comprehensive introductory manual that guides beginners to a functional reading knowledge of late medieval and early modern Yiddish (c.1100-1750). It is the first such manual to exist f

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.Earth is at once too large and too small. It exceeds human scale, and yet even medieval manusc

This book explores sets of movement cases in medieval Italian from 1200 to 1315. It offers an integrated description of all the relevant aspects of word order in Old Italian based on uniform principle

A local superstition or one of history's monsters come to life? Deep in the Bavarian forest, archaeologists unearth a medieval human skull with a brick stuffed in its mouth. When Annja Creed catches w

Most of us enjoy a regular stroll in our local wood, but we might not be aware of the ancient origins of our surroundings. From medieval times, woodlands were carefully managed commodities with hotly

Published in 1848, this two-volume study of Christian legends represented in Western medieval art is still of importance to art historians. Anna Brownell Jameson (1794–1860) was one of the great art c

Readers can discover all the foul facts about WICKED WORDS, including how to be very rude ...without anybody knowing, some murky Medieval jokes and what to say if someone calls you mundungus, hackum o

Sicilian Jews once accounted for about half of all Italian Jewry. In this major contribution to medieval Jewish historiography that is an offshoot of his 18-volume The Jews in Sicily (1997-2010), Simo

Act of Will is a boisterous fantasy adventure that introduces us to Will Hawthorne, a medieval actor and playwright who flees the authorities only to find himself inextricably bound to a group of hig

In medieval Europe baptism did not merely represent a solemn and public recognition of the 'natural' birth of a child, but was regarded as a second, 'spiritual birth', within a social group often diff

In the medieval town of Lindenwolde, sixteen-year-old Nyssa uses her ability to see into people's dreams to discover who broke into her father's woodworking shop and murdered her parents six years ago

Medieval Armenian art and architecture has been treated as anomalous in style and content from other works of the same era. In fact, as Jones (art history, Florida State U.) demonstrates in this notab

Why, and in what ways, did late medieval and early modern English people write about themselves, and what was their understanding of how "selves" were made and discussed? This collection goes to the h

A guide to managing a work environment identifies twelve types of employees and explains their strengths and weakness through the use of a parable featuring a medieval kingdom run by King Harold, a ch

Johannes Kepler wrote Astronomia Nova (1609) in a singleminded drive to sweep away the ancient and medieval clutter of spheres and orbs and to establish a new truth in astronomy, based on physical cau

Offers a richly illustrated history of Jews in Budapest, from medieval times to the present, and gives a comprehensive account of Jewish culture and ritual customs in Budapest. Looks in turn at each o

A philologist of world renown, a professor at Oxford, and the author of academic treatises, J. R. R. Tolkien was far more than a fantasy book writer. His lifelong fascination with medieval texts and

In 1952, a young Belgian scholar of European medieval history traveled to the Belgian Congo (now Zaire) to live in a remote Kuba village. Armed with a smattering of training in African cultures and

Everything you ever wanted to know about what happens to bodies after they die. In this exploration into the macabre, Mary Roach tells a story that reaches from medieval pharmacies, stories of 19th ce

William Heywood (1857–1919) experiencd a variety of jobs, including working as a lawyer, a cowboy and a newspaper editor, before retiring to Siena in Italy in 1894 and becoming a specialist in medieval Italian history. His unorthodox background is shown in his holistic interpretation of the growth of Pisa in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, in contrast to the treatment of historical material by contemporary historians. Heywood examines the politics, society and religion of Pisa to chart the growth of the city from a small port at the end of the Roman period to a powerful city-state by the end of the twelfth century. He is also the first historian to recognise the importance of maritime power struggles between other city-states as an integral part of Pisa's rise to power. This volume provides a valuable addition to the study of the historiography of medieval Italy.

A very close and clear description of Dante's style in those lyric poems, which can be dated with reasonable confidence. Dr Boyde explains the nature and objective of his analyses in the substantial introduction which does not assume any previous knowledge of the poems or of modern stylistic theory. He has three principal aims: first, to relate the style of the poems to medieval rhetorical teaching; secondly, to assess the degree of Dante's stylistic originality by comparison with the style of earlier medieval authors; and thirdly, to provide an accurate detailed description of the many developments in Dante's style over a period of twenty years. Close attention is paid throughout to the frequency and distribution of the features described, and there is abundant quotation of examples. The book will have a considerable theoretical interest to all those concerned with the analysis of the style of literature from the past.

Edited by Marie Camille Ragut (1797–1870), long-serving archivist in the library of Mâcon in Bourgogne, this cartulary is a collection of local records detailing day-to-day life in medieval France. This version was published in 1864 following Ragut's discovery of an authentic copy in the Mâcon archives, the original long since destroyed in religious riots. The book contains 633 charters that span a period of six centuries, including records on the topography, customs, people, and the rise of the feudal system in Mâcon. Dating from 593 to 1220, the ancient documents are reproduced in their original Latin and are supplemented with French annotations. Ragut's meticulous editorial additions contextualize the medieval documents, particularly her comprehensive introduction which situates the records within a more general history of the region. Detailed and fascinating, this cartulary provides an invaluable insight into the local history of the Mâconnais district.

This book, first published in 2000, draws on the great wealth of associations of street-names in Cambridge. It is not a dictionary, but it provides a series of entries on such topics as the Reformation, George IV and his wife, twentieth-century British scientists, businessmen, Elizabethan times, medieval Cambridge, mayors, millers, and builders. It includes hermits and coal merchants, field marshals and laundresses, martyrs and bombers, unscrupulous politicians and the founder of a Christian community, Cromwell and Newton, an Anglo-Saxon queen and the discoverer of Uranus - all people who lived in or often visited Cambridge. The ancient Stourbridge fair is included, along with castles and boat-races, sewage pumps and the original Hobson of 'Hobson's Choice'. Who was St Tibb? Where did Dick Turpin hide? Where was the medieval takeaway? Unlike earlier works, this is a history of everybody for everybody.

This book presents a comprehensive, accessible survey of Western philosophy of music from Pythagoras to the present. Its narrative traces themes and schools through history, in a sequence of five chapters that survey the ancient, medieval, early modern, modern and contemporary periods. Its wide-ranging coverage includes medieval Islamic thinkers, Continental and analytic thinkers, and neglected female thinkers such as Vernon Lee (Violet Paget). All aspects of the philosophy of music are discussed, including music and the cosmos, music's value, music's relation to the other arts, the problem of opera, the origins of musical genius, music's emotional impact, the moral effects of music, the ontology of musical works, and the relevance of music's historical context. The volume will be valuable for students and scholars in philosophy and musicology, and all who are interested in the ways in which philosophers throughout history have thought about music.

We will never know who built the first snowman, but they have a long history. Since medieval times, snowmen were built for amusement and enjoyment. They represented winter itself and are as much fun t

What happens when a troubled young woman dares to follow the stirrings of her soul in turbulent times? Elmina begins life with a troubled childhood in a medieval French town—a childhood that turns her

Having lost eight friends in ten years, Cooley retreats to a tiny medieval village in Italy with her husband to recover from la strage, or "the massacre." There, in this sun-drenched paradise where bu

Enter the enthralling medieval world of turreted castles attacked and defended by brave and noble knights! This interactive puzzle-in-a-book invites kids ages 7 and up to pop out and assemble a stand-

Bis dat, qui cito dat – never has a proverb more aptly applied to an individual than does this Medieval Latin saying to Wolfgang Mieder. «He gives twice who gives quickly» captures the essence of his