Medieval Studies
White Banners
Examines the fall of the Syrian Umayyad caliphate and the rise of the 'Abbasid state, predominantly from the view of the local inhabitants of medieval Syria.
Dante Between Philosophers and Theologians: Paradiso X - XIII
Raises the radical question of how Dante’s understanding of poetry shaped his theology, his ethics, and, more generally his sense of the organization of knowledge or encyclopedia.
Writing Without Footnotes: The Role of the Medievalist in Contemporary Intellectual Life
Argues that academics’ intellectual engagement with a public beyond the walls of their own specialties, and even beyond the walls of the academy, was long a commonplace and significant part of the work of professors and writers in the humanities.
Desire and Death, or Francesca and Guido Cavalcanti: Inferno 5 in Its Lyric Context
Explores the lyric context of Inferno 5.
Totems for Defence and Illustration of Taboo: Sites of Petrarchism in Renaissance Europe
Argues that critical comments appended to early printed editions of Petrarch’s Rime sparse inflected the reception and understanding of Petrarch’s vernacular poetry in Renaissance Europe.
Inscribing the Hundred Years' War in French and English Cultures
Examines the impact of the Hundred Years' War on French and English literature of the period, revealing the ways in which history influences literature and literature intervenes in history.
The Problem of Evil
The first comprehensive study of Ibn Sînâ’s Theodicy.
Insediamenti Francescani in Abruzzo nel Duecento e Sviluppo nel '300 e 400 con la Riforma Osservante
Analyzes the early presence of Franciscan monastic houses in Abruzzo in the thirteenth century.
Dante and Petrarch: The Earthly Paradise Revisited
Explores the nature and significance of Petrarch’s indebtedness to Dante in the Rime sparse.
Scholasticism
Leading scholars in the field of religious studies show that scholasticism as a comparative category is useful in the analysis of a variety of religious and philosophical traditions and even in the task of cultural criticism.
Dante's Cosmos
Freccero argues that the Paradiso may be considered a medieval version of science fiction.
Sex and Gender in Medieval and Renaissance Texts
Examines interrelated topics in Medieval and Renaissance Latin literature: the status of women as writers, the status of women as rhetorical figures, and the status of women in society from the fifth to the early seventeenth century.
Representation and Design
Examines Old English poetry from the point of view of its interpretation, drawing on Anglo-Saxon pictorial art as a model for the interaction of representation and design.
Servius and Commentary on Virgil
Traces the importance and influence, in the wake of Tiberius Claudius Donatus, of Servius' Commentaries in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, especially on the magisri, the grammatici, and the mythographers.
Besieging the Castle of Ladies
Traces the mysterious motif of the castle defined by women across several centuries, regions, and cultural expressions.
Celestina and Castilian Humanism at the End of the Fifteenth Century
Argues that the Comedia de Calisto y Melibea is a drama grounded in the western humanist tradition.
Women's Secrets
Women's Secrets provides the first modern translation of the notorious treatise De secretis mulierum, popular throughout the late middle ages and into modern times. The Secrets deals with human reproduction ...
The Refutation of the Christian Principles
During the fourteenth century, there was a general demoralization in the Jewish community in Spain. Many Jews were on the brink of conversion. Rabbi Crescas met the Christian challenge by writing this ...
Dante's Beatrice: Priest of an Androgynous God
Examines Dante’s character of Beatrice and contends that, more than simply leading Dante to God, Beatrice allows him to see a feminine side in God, humanity, and himself.
Speaking Two Languages
This book is designed for the medievalist interested in contemporary criticism but cautious about its limits. The volume's essays are not designed to offer rereadings of familiar texts, but to address ...
The Olde Daunce
In this volume a variety of perspectives reevaluate the nature of friendship, desire, and the olde daunce of love in the Middle Ages. Challenging earlier scholarly notions about medieval marriage, this ...
Wykked Wyves and the Woes of Marriage
Analysis of the literature demonstrates a link between the growing secularism and careerism of the late middle ages and the reduction of women’s social status and public options.