The Body and the Soul in Medieval Literature - J.A.W.Bennett Memorial Lectures

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Publisher Marketing: The theme of the body-and-soul relationship in medieval texts and in modern reworkings of medieval matter is explored in the articles here, specifically the representation of the body in romance; the relevance of bawdy tales to the cultural experience of authors and readers in the middle ages; the function of despair, or melancholy, in medieval and Renaissance literature; and the political significance of late medieval representations of bodies' in the chroniclers' accounts of the Rising and in Gower's poems. Two articles are devoted to modern retellings of medieval themes: John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, seen in relation to the traditional acta martyrum, and the medieval revival in Tory Britain exemplified in Douglas Oliver's The Infant and the Pearl. Contributors: PAMELA JOSEPH BENSON, NIGEL S. THOMPSON, JON WHITMAN, JEROME MANDEL, BARBARA NOLAN, YASUNARI TAKADA, YVETTE MARCHAND, ROBERT F. YEAGER, JOERG O. FICHTE, JOHN KERRIGAN

Contributor Bio:  Boitani, Piero Piero Boitani is Professor of Comparative Literature in the Department of English at the University of Rome 'La Sapienza'. He is the author of many volumes including The Tragic and the Sublime in Medieval Literature (Cambridge University Press, 1989), The Shadow of Ulysses. Figures of a Myth (1994) and The Bible and its Rewritings (1999).