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The study takes the received view among scholars that women in the Middle Ages were faced with sustained misogyny and that their voices were seldom heard in public and subjects it to a critical analysis. The ten chapters deal with various aspects of the question, and the voices of a variety of authors - both female and male - are heard. The study opens with an enquiry into violence against women, including in texts by male writers (Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried von Straburg, Wolfram von Eschenbach) which indeed describe instances of violence, but adopt an extremely critical stance towards them. It then proceeds to show how women were able to develop an independent identity in various genres and could present themselves as authorities in the public eye. Mystic texts by Hildegard of Bingen, Marie de France and Margery Kempe, the medieval conduct poem known as Die Winsbeckin, the Devout Books of Sisters composed in convents in South-West Germany, but also quasi-historical documents such as the memoirs of Helene Kottaner or Anna Weckerin's cookery book, demonstrate that far more women were in the public gaze than had hitherto been assumed and that they possessed the self-confidence to establish their positions with their intellectual and their literary achievements.

Bi- and multilingualism are of great interest for contemporary linguists since this phenomenon deeply reflects on language acquisition, language use, and sociolinguistic conditions in many different circumstances all over the world. Multilingualism was, however, certainly rather common already, if not especially, in the premodern world. For some time now, research has started to explore this issue through a number of specialized studies. The present volume continues with the investigation of multilingualism through a collection of case studies focusing on important examples in medieval and early modern societies, that is, in linguistic and cultural contact zones, such as England, Spain, the Holy Land, but also the New World. As all contributors confirm, the numerous cases of multilingualism discussed here indicate strongly that the premodern period knew considerably less barriers between people of different social classes, cultural background, and religious orientation. But we also have to acknowledge that already then human communication could fail because of linguistic hurdles which prevented mutual understanding in religious and cultural terms.

This book provides a needed overview of the scholarship on medieval public culture and popular movements such as the Peace of God, heresy, and the crusades and illustrates how a changing sense of the populus, the importance of publics and public opinion and public spheres was influential in the evolution of medieval cultures. Public opinion did play an important role, even in the Middle Ages; it did not wait until the era of modern history to do so. Using modern research on such aspects of culture as textual communities, large and small publics, cults, crowds, rumor, malediction, gossip, dispute resolution and the European popular revolution, the author focuses on the Peace of God movement, the era of Church reform in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the rise and combat of heresy, the crusades, and the works of fourteenth-century political thinkers such as Marsiglio of Padua regarding the role of the populus as the basis for the analysis. The pattern of changes reflected in this study argues that just as in the modern world the simplistic idea of "e;the public was a phantom. Instead there were publics large and small that were influential in shaping the cultures of the era under review.

The contributions to this volume explore the intellectual approaches to time and space through literary and historical reflections upon the self and its space from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Age. No longer simply defined by travelogues, travel itself is here recognized as a major movement through space that allows for a reflection on the self and the outer world.

Death has never been a simple matter, neither for the victim/s nor for the survivors. All societies have deeply struggled with the issue of death and have found material and spiritual answers in response to death. The medieval and early modern world had to cope with the same questions, but found its own answers. This book deals with this topic.

Modern myths about medieval and early modern hygiene and health continue to dominate our understanding of the pre-modern world. Their societies functioned well because they embraced their own hygiene and had a functioning medical system.

The aim of this English-language series on medieval studies is to establish a methodical, discerning connection between text analysis and cultural history. The series addresses the fundamental cultural themes of the medieval world from the perspective of literary studies and the humanities. These fundamental themes are the culture-formative conceptualizations, world views, social structures and everyday conditions of medieval life, namely, childhood and old age, sexuality, religion, medicine, rituals, work, poverty and wealth, superstition, earth and cosmos, city and country, war, emotions, communication, travel etc. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture pursues important current discussions in the field and provides a forum for interdisciplinary medieval research. The series is open to anthologies as well as monographs. The aim of the series is to present compendium-like works on the central topics of medieval cultural history that provide a sound overview of a limited subject area from the perspective of various disciplines. On the whole, the series thus presents an encyclopedia of medieval literary and cultural history and its main topics.

Explores the often problematic, and also productive relationships between East and West during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age, focusing on literary and pragmatic texts, scientific exchanges, strategies to build bridges to the other culture, and on parallel cultural developments documenting contacts and communication between both worlds.

Understanding mental health from a religious, literary, and philosophical point-of-view represents a critical component in the research on alternative approaches to well-being, spiritually and physically. This volume contains a selection of papers drawn from a conference at The University of Arizona in May 2013 addressing all these issues.

This volume treats old age and old people as reflected in medieval and early modern literature, historical documents, and visual products, offering innovative perspectives, examining hitherto neglected texts and art works, and taking stock of previous research.

More than a mere pastime, chess was an important pedagogical tool and thought paradigm in the Middle Ages. In this collection of essays, scholars investigate chess texts from various European traditions and make the case for seeing chess as an important key to understanding medieval culture.

In the wake of the Spatial Turn and the emergence of ecocritical theory, rural space proves to be a highly fertile ground for the reexamination of medieval and early modern literature, history, and art history.

Features studies that explore the phenomenon of sexuality in a variety of medieval and early-modern literatures, including Old English texts, Middle-High German narratives, medieval Spanish and early-modern French literature, and also eighteenth-century English novels.

The articles in this volume study medieval laws and documents reflecting on vices, crimes, and wrongdoings and thus give a profound analysis of the premodern world in its development in social, economic, legal, moral, and ethical terms.

Authorities in the Middle Ages investigates the definition, establishment, and collapse of medieval authority from antiquity to the mid-fifteenth century. The interdisciplinary approach resonates with the multi-faceted field of medieval culture, its social structures, and various forms of communication, in various disciplines.

War and Peace

Medieval historians and literary scholars have not ignored the topic of sexual violence and rape, but the primary focus has regularly rested on English, French, or Italian documents. Here we have the first book-length study that investigates the treatment of sexual crimes in medieval and early modern German and Latin literature, making great efforts to shed light on often ignored scenes and episodes even in some of the classical' works such as Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival or the anonymous Nibelungenlied. As this monograph reveals, many times we face situations where we cannot easily determine whether rape has occurred or not. Consequently, we recognize an important discourse in these literary examples concerning the question of how to view and deal with sexual violence, which could also involve men as victims. This critical examination extends toward sixteenth-century jest narratives (Schwanke) where the issue of rape continued to occupy the authors' minds. Moreover, as numerous side glances to contemporary European literature indicate, the theme of sexual violence was of universal concern and critical importance during the entire premodern era.

Although it seems that erotic love generally was the prevailing topic in the medieval world and the Early Modern Age, parallel to this the Ciceronian ideal of friendship also dominated the public discourse. This title explores the functions and the character of friendship from Late Antiquity (Augustine) to the 17th century.

Despite popular opinions of the 'dark Middle Ages' and a 'gloomy early modern age', many people laughed, smiled, giggled, chuckled, entertained and ridiculed each other. This title demonstrates how important laughter had been at times and how diverse the situations proved to be in which people laughed.

The contributors to this new volume explore the wide gamut of characteristic features determining the rise of the city as a central living space since the high Middle Ages, and extend the investigation up to the eighteenth century. Historians, literary historians, and art historians reflect upon the meaning of urban space as it evolved since ca.