L'Agenda des Médiévistes

What happens if a cleric breaks his vows of sexual abstinence? What happens if the cleric in question does so repeatedly with other men of his vocation? Eleventh-century theologian Peter Damian provides a response.

What happens if an author uses metaphor as a metaphor signifying and excoriating male same-sex relations, yet does so in a text showing an exuberant and unabashed orientation towards metaphorical language? Is the author in question rhetorically perpetrating precisely the so-called affront to nature he grammatically denounces? Twelfth-century poet Alain de Lille enacts an ambiguously enigmatic response.

David Rollo (Ph.D. Princeton, 1988), is Professor of English at the University of Southern California. He has previously taught English at the Université Française de l’Océan Indien (La Réunion) and French at Dartmouth College. His books are Historical Fabrication, Ethnic Fable and French Romance in Twelfth-Century England(1998), Glamorous Sorcery: Magic and Literacy in the High Middle Ages(2000), and Kiss my Relics: Hermaphroditic Fictions of the Middle Ages(2011).

Informations pratiques :

Medieval Writings on Sex between Men. Peter Damian’s The Book of Gomorrah and Alain de Lille’s The Plaint of Nature, introd. et trad. David Rollo, Leiden–Boston, 2022 (Explorations in Medieval Culture, 19). X–184 p. ISBN 978-90-04-42965-9. Prix : 118 euros.

Source : Brill

The critical text of the Anglo-Norman Bible’s Book of  Judges is here based on the fourteenth-century manuscript British Library Royal I C III. An introduction and notes elucidate the text for the modern reader.

A silver-tongued assassin, a motherly prophetess, a consecrated strongman unable to resist the charms of foreign women: the Anglo-Norman Bible’s Book of Judges features a roll-call of unlikely heroes. At the book’s core is a cycle of saviour stories. Twelve times the Israelites embrace foreign gods, succumb to neighbouring enemies, repent and are delivered by a ‘judge’. As Israel itself descends into ever-greater religious, moral and political decay, the narrative pattern also unravels. The book ends bleakly, with stories of rape, murder and civil war. The stage is set for a king.

Gideon—a doubting Thomas who repeatedly ‘tests’ God—and Samson—lion-killer and lover of Delilah—were firm medieval favourites. Their tales and those of other flawed judges inspired heroic deeds on the battlefield and provided lessons on how to behave (and indeed how not to behave). With its remarkable heroines, moreover—from cut-throat Jael, who wields a tent-peg to devastating effect, to Jephthah’s dignified daughter, sacrificed because of her father’s rash vow—this is a book that prompted much reflection in the Middle Ages on the place of women in society.The Anglo-Norman Bible’s Book of Judges survives in two fourteenth-century manuscripts: British Library Royal MS 1 C III (L), noted for its multilingual glosses, and the richly illustrated Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fonds français 1 (P). The critical text, based on L, has been prepared by Pitts. An introduction and notes by Grange aim to elucidate and interpret the Anglo-Norman Bible’s Book of Judges for the modern reader.

Brent A. Pitts is the editor of numerous geographical and biblical works in Anglo-Norman, including the Anglo-Norman Bible’s books of Joshua, Ruth and Tobit. He is professor emeritus of French at Meredith College, Raleigh, North Carolina.

Huw Grange is the author of Saints and Monsters in Medieval French and Occitan Literature (2017).He is currently a researcher at UiT The Arctic University of Norway.

Table des matières :

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
The Old Testament book of Judges
Manuscripts of the Anglo-Norman Bible’s book of Judges
Sources and influence of the Anglo-Norman Bible’s book of Judges
Comparison of manuscripts L and P
Language
Orthography
Nouns, articles, adjectives and pronouns
Verbs
Syntax
Lexis
The book of Judges in medieval culture
Editorial considerations
Bibliography
The Anglo-Norman Bible’s book of Judges
Text edition
Rejected readings
Critical notes
Appendices
A. Comparison of the Anglo-Norman Bible to the twelfth-century Anglo-Norman Judges
B. Comparison of L and P
C. Divergent word-choice in L and P
D. Personal names in the Anglo-Norman Bible’s book of Judges
E. Geographical names in the Anglo-Norman Bible’s book of Judges
Glossary

Informations pratiques :

The Anglo-Norman Bible’s Book of Judges. A Critical Edition (BL Royal 1 C III), Turnhout, Brepols, 2022 (Textes vernaculaires du Moyen Âge). 169 p., 1 b/w ill., 156 x 234 mm, 2022 ISBN: 978-2-503-60011-6. Prix : 70 euros.

Source : Brepols

Qui pourrait croire que le roi Édouard III d’Angleterre a violé l’épouse de son proche ami William Montagu, comte de Salisbury ? C’est pourtant ce qu’affirme vers 1350 un récit stupéfiant du chroniqueur Jean Le Bel.

Tel est le point de départ de ce livre. L’auteur montre comment Jean Le Bel, admirateur déçu d’Édouard III, invente ce forfait après que son héros, qui se rêvait en nouveau roi Arthur, a renoncé à conquérir la couronne de France. Sa chronique tombe vite dans l’oubli mais le chroniqueur Jean Froissart a eu le temps de transformer cette sombre histoire en un grand récit d’amour courtois. La fiction inventée par Jean Le Bel connaît ainsi une étonnante carrière, qui la conduira notamment à donner forme, vers 1580, à la légende fondatrice de l’ordre de la Jarretière et à être reprise par de nombreux écrivains, de Bandello et Shakespeare à Alexandre Dumas.

Après la redécouverte de la chronique de Jean Le Bel, l’amour d’Édouard III pour la comtesse de Salisbury ne peut plus rester un thème littéraire. Mais cette histoire et la série de détournements et d’interprétations dont elle a été l’objet sont une éclatante démonstration de la puissante intrication entre l’Histoire, la Fiction et le Roman.

Jean-Marie Moeglin, ancien élève de l’École normale supérieure et ancien membre de l’Institut universitaire de France, est professeur d’histoire culturelle du Moyen Âge à Sorbonne-Université et directeur d’études à l’École pratique des Hautes Études. Il est l’auteur de nombreux travaux, notamment sur les rituels politiques et l’historiographie.

Informations pratiques :

Jean-Marie Moeglin, Edouard III, le viol de la comtesse de Salisbury et la fondation de l’ordre de la Jarretière, Paris, PUF, 2022. 256 p. ISBN : 978-2-13-083346-8. Prix : 22 euros.

Source : PUF

How historians in the central Middle Ages rewrote the past to meet the needs of a changing present.

In the Middle Ages, rewriting history was a distinct activity within the larger sphere of historical writing. Rewriting started with existing historical accounts, recasting them into new forms as new stories about the past. Changes in circumstances drove rewriting, encouraging historically literate writers and their patrons to examine their histories anew, to jettison what no longer made sense or was useful, and to supply new material to fill gaps or expand ideas. Writers rewrote not only for the present and future, but also for the past. They curated the past and reorganized its intellectual artifacts, thereby revealing new facets of old history to future eyes.

Rewriting was a defining characteristic of the central Middle Ages (900–1300), distinct both from earlier traditions of universal history and from later traditions of making continuations which left the narrative core intact. Reimagining the past by rewriting happened across genres, in the vernaculars as well as the universal languages of Latin and Greek, and across Europe, west and east. The chapters in this book explore the reasons and methods for rewriting, ranging across the Anglo-Norman realm, France and Flanders, Christian Iberia, Norman Italy and the Mediterranean, Byzantium, and Georgia and Armenia. Together, they show a set of rewriters who made themselves the authorities for their own age.

Emily A. Winkler is Principal Investigator of a research project on medieval historical writing in England and Wales, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. She is a Research Fellow at St Edmund Hall and the Faculty of History at the University of Oxford. An historian of medieval thought and writing, she has research interests in responsibility and leadership, conquest and diplomacy, material culture, and emotion and experience.

C. P. Lewis is Research Fellow in the Department of History at King’s College London, and Senior Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research. He has published on English and Welsh history in the central Middle Ages and has edited both Anglo-Norman Studies and Haskins Society Journal. Besides his published articles on the twelfth-century Life of Gruffudd ap Cynan, he has work in hand on the Anglo-Norman historians Orderic Vitalis and William of Malmesbury.

Table des matières :

Rewriting History in the Central Middle Ages, 900–1300, éd. Emily A. Winkler et C. P. Lewis, Turnhout, Brepols, 2022 (International Medieval Research, 26). 342 p., 8 maps, 156 x 234 mm.
ISBN: 978-2-503-59686-0. Prix : 95 euros.

Source : Brepols