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Medieval Studies @ Harvard

• Ph.D. dissertations in Medieval Studies, 1990-2016

The lists provided here offer a guide to the hundreds of dissertations on topics in Medieval Studies completed at Harvard University during the last three decades. Please inform Sean Gilsdorf of any omissions, errors, or necessary corrections.

Dissertations by Author

Rahim Acar (NELC, 2002): Creation: A comparative study between Avicenna's and Aquinas' positions

Catherine Adoyo (Romance Languages, 2011): The order of all things: Mimetic craft in Dante's Commedia

Panagiotis Agapitos (Classics, 1990): Narrative structure in the Byzantine vernacular romances: A textual and literary study of Kallimachos , Belthandros and Libistros

Ahmad Ahmad (NELC, 2005): Structural interrelations of theory and practice in Islamic law: A study of Takhrīj al-Furūʻ ʻalá al-Uṣūl literature

Aslıhan Akışık (History and Middle Eastern Studies, 2013): Self and other in the Renaissance: Laonikos Chalkokondyles and Late Byzantine Intellectuals

Yasmine Al-Saleh (History of Art, 2014): "Licit Magic": The Touch and Sight Of Islamic Talismanic Scrolls

Dimiter Angelov (History, 2002): Imperial ideology and political thought in Byzantium, 1204-ca. 1330

Diliana Angelova (History of Art, 2005): Gender and imperial authority in Rome and early Byzantium, first to sixth centuries

Zayde Antrim (History, 2005): Place and belonging in medieval Syria, 6th/12th to 8th/14th centuries

Sinān Antūn (NELC, 2006): The poetics of the obscene: Ibn al-Ḥajjāj and Sukhf

Francesco Aresu (Romance Languages, 2015): The Author as Scribe: Materiality and Textuality in the Trecento

Kirsten Ataoguz (History of Art, 2007): The apostolic commissioning of the monks of Saint John in Müestair, Switzerland: painting and preaching in a Churraetian Monastery

Sarah Axelrod (Romance Languages, 2015): Umorismo and Critical Reading in Boccaccio’s Vernacular and Latin Opere ‘Minori’

Fatemeh Azinfar (Comparative Literature, 1999): Doubt , dissent and skepticism in the literary tradition of the medieval period

Patrick Baker (History, 2009): Illustrious men: Italian renaissance humanists on humanism

Timothy Baker (Religion, 2015): “Be You as Living Stones Built Up, A Spiritual House, A Holy Priesthood”: Cistercian Exegesis, Reforms, and the Construction of Holy Architectures

Abigail Balbale (History, 2011): Between Kings and Caliphs: Religion and Authority in Sharq al-Andalus, 542-640 AH/1145-1243 C.E.

Bridget Balint (Classics, 2002): Hildebert of Lavardin's "Liber de querimonia" in its cultural context

Henry Bayerle (Comparative Literature, 2004): Speakers in the Latin historical epics of twelfth-century Italy

Dianne Bazell (Religion, 1991): Christian diet: A case study using Arnald of Villanova's De esu carnium

Alexis Becker (English, 2015): Practical Georgics: Managing the Land in Medieval Britain

William Bennett (English, 1992): Interrupting the word: Mankind and the politics of the vernacular

Jessica Berenbeim (History of Art and Architecture, 2012): Art of Documentation: The Sherborne Missal and the Role of Documents in English Medieval Art

Robert Berkhofer (History, 1997): Monastic patrimony, management and accountability in Northern France, ca. 1000-1200

Persis Berlekamp (History of Art, 2003): Wonders and their images in late medieval Islamic culture: "the wonders of creation" in Fars and Iraq, 1280-1388

Gabriella Berzin (Near Eastern Languages, 2010): The Medieval Hebrew version of psychology in Avicenna's Salvation ( Al-Najāt )

Janna Bianchini (née Wasilewski) (History, 2007): Regina : The life of Berenguela of Castile, 1180-1246

Noël Bisson (Music, 1998): English polyphony for the Virgin Mary: The votive antiphon, 1430-1500

Josiah Blackmore (History, 1992): Fernão Lopes and the Writing of History in the Crónica de D. João I

James Blasina (Music, 2015): Music and Gender in the Medieval Cult of St. Katherine of Alexandria, c. 1050-1300

Emmanuel Bourbouhakis (Classics, 2006): "Not composed in a chance manner": The epitaphios for Manuel I Komnenos by Eustathius of Thessalonike: text, translation, commentary

Matthieu Boyd (Celtic, 2011): The source of enchantment: The Marvels of Rigomer ( Les Mervelles de Rigomer ) and the evolution of Celtic influence on medieval francophone storytelling

Nancy Breen (Celtic, 1999): Towards an edition of Di astud chirt ⁊ dligid

Benjamin Bruch (Celtic, 2005): Du gveras a.b.c/An pen can hanna yv d : Cornish verse forms and the evolution of Cornish prosody, c. 1350-1611

Christopher Cannon (English, 1993): The making of Chaucer's English: A study in the formation of a literary language

Nicola Carpentieri (NELC, 2012): The Poetics of Aging Spain and Sicily at the Twilight of Muslim Sovereignty

William Carroll (Germanic Languages, 1995): Latin education and secular German literature: An analysis of Latin grammar instruction and its influence on middle high German poets

Gary Cestaro (Romance Languages, 1990): The whip and the wet nurse: Dante's De vulgari eloquentia and the psychology of grammar in the Middle Ages

Kathryn Chadbourne (Celtic, 1999): The otherworld procession in Irish and Welsh literature and folklore

Christina Chance (Celtic, 2010): Imagining empire: Maxen Wledic, Arthur, and Charlemagne in Welsh literature after the Edwardian conquest

Horacio Chiong Rivero (Romance Languages, 2002): Maker of masks: Fray Antonio de Guevara's pseudo-historical fictionalizations

Jeffrey Cohen (English, 1992): The tradition of the giant in early England: A study of the monstrous in folklore, theology, history and literature

William Cole (Romance Languages, 1991): Romance to tragedy: A comparative study of the Tristan poems of Béroul and Gottfried

Jonathan Conant (History, 2004): Staying Roman: Vandals, Moors, and Byzantines in late antique North Africa, 400-700

Kassandra Conley (Celtic Languages, 2014): Looking towards India: Nativism and Orientalism in the Literature of Wales, 1300-1600

Alan Cooper (History, 1998): Obligation and jurisdiction: Roads and bridges in medieval England (c. 700-1300)

Michael Cooperson (NELC, 1994): The heirs of the prophets in classical Arabic biography

Jason Crawford (English, 2008): Personification and its discontents: Studies from Langland to Bunyan

Barbara Croken (NELC, 1990): Zabîd under the Rasulids of Yemen, 626-858 AH/ 1229-1454 AD

Michael Cuthbert (Music, 2006): Trecento fragments and polyphony beyond the codex

Philip Daileader (History, 1996): The medieval community of Perpignan, 1162-1397

Jennifer Davis (History, 2007): Patterns of Power: Charlemagne and the Invention of Medieval Rulership

Robert Davis (Religion, 2012): The Force of Union: Affect and Ascent in the Theology of Bonaventure

Anthony D'Elia (History, 2000): In praise of matrimony: Italian renaissance humanists on marriage and sexual pleasure

Susan Deskis (English, 1991): Proverbial backgrounds to the sententiae of Beowulf

Mark DeStephano (Romance Languages, 1995): Feudal relations in the Poema de mío Cid : Comparative perspectives in medieval Spanish and French epic

Alnoor Dhanani (History of Science, 1991): Kalām and Hellenistic cosmology: Minimal parts in Basrian Muʻtazilī atomism

Giorgio DiMauro (Slavic Languages, 2002): The furnace, the crown, and the serpent: Images of Babylon in Muscovite Rus'

Saskia Dirkse (Classics, 2015): The Great Mystery: Death, Memory and the Archiving of Monastic Culture in Late Antique Religious Tales

Rowan Dorin (History, 2015): Banishing Usury: The Expulsion of Foreign Moneylenders in Medieval Europe, 1200-1450

Carol Dover (Romance Languages, 1990): Nature, nurture and the hero: Narrating identity in the old French prose Lancelot

Simon Doubleday (History, 1996): The Laras: An aristocratic family in the kingdoms of Castile and León, 1075-1361

David Drogin (History of Art, 2003): Representations of Bentivoglio authority: Fifteenth-century painting and sculpture in the Bentivoglio Chapel, San Giacomo Maggiore, Bologna

Ivan Drpić (History of Art, 2011): Kosmos of verse: Epigram, art, and devotion in later Byzantium

Mary Dunn (Religion, 2008): Sainte-Anne-du-Petit-Cap: The making of an early modern shrine

Leslie Dunton-Downer (Comparative Literature, 1992): The obscene poetic self in Rutebeuf and Chaucer

Koray Durak (History, 2008): Commerce and networks of exchange between the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic Near East from the early ninth century to the arrival of the Crusaders

Nadia El Cheikh (History, 1992): Byzantium viewed by the Arabs

Ahmed El Shamsy (Middle Eastern Studies, 2009): From tradition to law: The origins and early development of the Shāfi‘ī School of Law in ninth-century Egypt

Daphna Ephrat (NELC, 1993): The Sunni ʻulama ʾ of eleventh-century Baghdad and the transmission of knowledge: A social history

Charlene Eska (née Shipman) (Celtic, 2006): An edition of Cáin Lánamna : An Old Irish tract on marriage and divorce law

Pauline Eskenasy (NELC, 1991): Antony of Tagrit's Rhetoric book one: Introduction, partial translation, and commentary

Marilina Falzarano (Romance Languages, 1999): Il volgarizzamento dei seitte salmi penitenziali di Simone Da Cascina

Lianna Farber (English, 1998): Legitimacy in late medieval England

Feng Xiang (English, 1990): Chaucer and the Romaunt of the Rose : A new study in authorship

Justine Firnhaber-Baker (History, 2007): Guerram publice et palem faciendo : Local war and royal authority in late medieval southern France

Timothy Fitzgerald (Middle Eastern Studies, 2009): Ottoman methods of conquest: Legal imperialism and the city of Aleppo, 1480-1570

Hugh Fogarty (Celtic, 2005): A critical edition of the Middle Irish saga Aided Guill meic Carbada ocus Aided Gairb Glinni Rígi

Sheryl Forste-Gruppe (Comparative Literature, 1996): Signifying acts: Writing in the Middle English romances

Katherine Forsyth (Celtic, 1996): The Ogham inscriptions of Scotland: An edited corpus

Elizabeth Fowler (English, 1992): The contingencies of person: Studies in the poetic and legal conceits of early modern England

Shirin Fozi (History of Art, 2010): The body recast and revived: Figural tomb sculpture in the Holy Roman Empire, 1080--1160

Brian Frykenberg (Celtic, 1994): Poetry of Suibne Geilt and St. Mo-Ling from Brussels Bibliothèque Royale MS. 5100-04

Bruce Fudge (NELC, 2003): The major Qurʼān commentary of al-Ṭabrisī (d. 548/1154)

John Gagné (History, 2008): French Milan: Citizens, occupiers, and the Italian Wars, 1499-1529

Sophia Georgiopoulou (Classics, 1990): Theodore II Dukas Laskaris (1222-1258) as an author and an intellectual of the XIIIth century

Kelly Gibson (History, 2011): Rewriting History: Carolingian Reform and Controversy in Biographies of Saints

Clare Gillis (History, 2010): Illicit sex, Unfaithful Translations: Latin, Old High German and the Birth of a New Sexual Morality in the Early Middle Ages

Luis Girón Negrón (Religion, 1997): Alfonso de la Torre's Visión deleytable : Philosophical rationalism and the religious imagination in fifteenth-century Spain

Roberto Gonzalez-Casanovas (Romance Languages, 1990): Predicación y Narrativa en Ramón Llull: De Imagen a Semejanza en Blanquerna

Jennifer Gordon (History, 2014): Obeying Those in Authority: The Hidden Political Message in Twelver Exegesis

Sara Gorman (English, 2013): Transformative Allegory: Imagination from Alan of Lille to Spenser

Margaret Marion Gower (Religion, 2015): The Heart of Peace: Christine de Pizan and Christian Theology

Stefanie Goyette (Romance Languages, 2012): Indiscriminate Bodies: The Old French Fabliaux in Relation to Thirteenth-Century Medical and Religious Cultures

Rachel Goshgarian (History, 2008): Beyond the social and the spiritual: Redefining the urban confraternities of late medieval Anatolia

Jeffrey Gross (English, 1991): "Such stuff as dreams are made on": The poetics of narrative voice in Chaucer's Book of the Duchess

Rosemary Hale (Religion, 1992): Imitatio Mariae : Motherhood motifs in late medieval German spirituality

Leor Halevi (Middle Eastern Studies, 2002): Muhammad 's grave: Death, ritual and society in the early Islamic world

Cynthia Hall (History of Art, 2002): Treasury book of the passion: Word and image in the Schatzbehalter

Elizabeth Haluska-Rausch (History, 1998): Family, property, and power: Women in medieval Montpellier, 985-1213

John Harkness (Linguistics, 1991): An approach to the metrical behavior of Old English verbs

Kyle Harper (History, 2007): Slavery in the late ancient Mediterranean

Margaret Healy-Varley (English, 2011): Anselm's fictions and the literary afterlife of the Proslogion

Erik Heinrichs (History, 2009): The plague cure: Physicians, clerics and the reform of healing in Germany, 1473--1650

Eva Helfenstein (History of Art, 2012): The Goblet of Philip the Good: Precious Vessels at the Court of Burgundy

Georgia Henley (Celtic Languages and Literatures, 2017): Monastic Manuscripts of the Anglo-Welsh March: A Study in Literary Transmission

Samantha Herrick (History, 2002): Imagining the sacred past in hagiography of early Normandy: The Vita Taurini , Vita Vigoris and Passio Nicasii

Seth Hindin (History of Art, 2011): History and ethnic commitment in the visual culture of medieval Bohemia, ca. 1200-ca. 1420

Elisabeth Hodges (Romance Languages, 2002): City views: Writing and the topography of Frenchness and the Renaissance

Megan Holmes (History of Art, 1993): Frate Filippo Di Tommaso Dipintore : Fra Filippo Lippi and Florentine Renaissance religious practices

Katharine Horsley (English, 2004): Poetic visions of London civic ceremony, 1360-1440

Gregory Hutcheson (Romance Languages, 1993): Marginality and empowerment in Baena's Cancionero

John Hutton (History of Art, 1992): Rural buildings in Netherlandish painting, ca. 1420-1570

Sarah Insley (Classics, 2011): Constructing a sacred center: Constantinople as a holy city in early Byzantine literature

Kathryn Izzo (Celtic, 2007): The Old Irish hymns of the Liber Hymnorum : A study of vernacular hymnody in medieval Ireland

Angela Jaffray (NELC, 2000): At the threshold of philosophy: A study of al-Fārābī's introductory works on logic

Paul Jefferiss (Celtic, 1991): Literary theory and criticism in medieval Ireland

Geraldine Johnson (History of Art, 1994): In the eye of the beholder: Donatello's sculpture in the life of Renaissance Italy

Aled Jones (Celtic, 2011): Ol wrth ol attor ar eu hennyd: Political Prophecy in the Earliest Welsh Manuscripts, c. 1250-c. 1540

Lars Jones (History of Art, 1999): Visio divina, exegesis, and beholder-image relationships in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Indications from donor figure representations

Danielle Joyner (History of Art, 2007): A timely history: Images and texts in the Hortus Deliciarum

Jakub Kabala (History, 2014): Imaginging Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages: Frankish, Roman and Byzantine Concepts of Space and Power in the Slavlands, c.750-900

Kathryn Karczewska (Romance Languages, 1996): In days of future past: Prophecy and knowledge in the French vulgate grail legends

Dimitris Kastritsis (Middle Eastern Studies, 2005): The Ottoman interregnum (1402-1413): Politics and narratives of dynastic succession

David Keck (History, 1992): The angelology of Saint Bonaventure and the harvest of medieval angelology

Craig Kennedy (History, 1994): The Juchids of Muscovy: A Study of Personal Ties Between Émigré Tatar Dynasts and the Muscovite Grand Princes in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

Alexander Key (NELC, 2012): A Linguistic Frame of Mind: ar-Ragib al-Isfahani and What it Meant To Be Ambiguous

Elaheh Kheirandish (History of Science, 1991): The medieval Arabic tradition of Euclid's Optika

Nuha Khoury (History of Art, 1992): The mihrab concept: Palatial themes in early Islamic religious architecture

Ji-Hyun Kim (Romance Languages, 2005): For a modern medieval literature: Gaston Paris, courtly love, and the demands of modernity

Margaret Kim (English, 2000): Visions of theocratics: The discourse of politics and the primacy of religion in Piers Plowman

Bettina Kimpton (Celtic, 2006): An edition of Brislech mór maige murthemni

Irit Kleiman (Romance Languages, 2003): Traitor, author, text: Four late medieval narratives of betrayal

† Elka Klein (History, 1996): Power and patrimony: The Jewish community of Barcelona, 1050-1250

Yaron Klein (NELC, 2009): Musical instruments as objects of meaning in classical Arabic poetry and philosophy

Jennifer Knight (Celtic, 2011): Self and society in early Irish literature

Adam Kosto (History, 1996): Making and keeping agreements in medieval Catalonia, 1000-1200

Thomas Kozachek (Music, 1995): The repertory of chant for dedicating churches in the Middle Ages: Music, liturgy, and ritual

Aden Kumler (History of Art, 2007): Visual translation, visible theology: Illuminated compendia of spiritual instruction in late medieval France and England

Demetrios Kyritses (History, 1997): The Byzantine aristocracy in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries

Justin Lake (Classics, 2008): Rhetorical and narrative studies on the Historiae of Richer of Saint-Remi

Christian Lang (Religion, 2006): Executing justice in Sunnī Islam: Historical, poetical, eschatological and legal dimensions of punishment under the Saljūqs (1055-1194 CE)

Heather Larson (Celtic, 1999): The Women's Voice in Gaelic Poetry

Rena Lauer (History, 2014): Venice’s Colonial Jews: Community, Identity, and Justice in Late Medieval Venetian Crete

Marc Laureys (Classics, 1992): An edition and study of Giovanni Cavallini's Polistoria de virtutibus et dotibus Romanorum

Eric Lawee (NELC, 1993): "Inheritance of the fathers": Aspects of Isaac Abarbanel's stance towards tradition

Lisa Lawrence (Religion, 2002): The Irish and the incarnation: Images of Christ in the Old Irish poems of Blathmac

F. Dominic Longo (Religion, 2011): Spiritual Grammar: A Comparative Theological Study of Jean Gerson's Donatus moralizatus and Abd al Karim al-Qushayri's Nahw al-qulub

William Layher (Germanic Languages, 1999): Queen Eufemia's Legacy: Middle Low German Literary Culture, Royal Patronage, and the First Old Swedish Epic (1301)

Anne Lea (Celtic, 1995): Contextualizing the Gorhoffeddau : A Study in the Intellectual Background of Two Medieval Welsh Poems

Christine Lee (Comparative Literature, 2011): Renaissance Romance: Redrawing the Boundaries of Fiction

Isabelle Charlotte Levy (Comparative Literature, 2014): The Poetics of Love in Prosimetra across the Medieval Mediterranean

Christina Linklater (Music, 2006): Popularity, Presentation and the Chansonnier Saint-Germain-des-Prés

Benjamin Liu (Romance Languages, 1996): Equivocal Poetics and Cultural Ambiguity in the Cantigas d'escarnho e de mal dizer

Yan Liu (History of Science, 2015): Toxic Cures: Poisons and Medicines in Medieval China

Christopher Livanos (Comparative Literature, 2001): Greek and Latin traditions in the work of George Gennadios Scholarios

Sally Livingston (Comparative Literature, 2008): Owning property, being property: Medieval and modern women shape the narratives of marriage

Diana Luft (Celtic, 2004): Medieval Welsh translation: The case of Ymddiddan Selyf a Marcwlff

Bernard Lumpkin (Comparative Literature, 1999): The Making of a Medieval Outlaw: Code and Community in the Robin Hood Legend

Amanda Luyster (History of Art, 2003): Courtly Images Far From Court: The Family Saint-Floret, Representation, and Romance

Evan MacCarthy (Music, 2010): Music and Learning in Early Renaissance Ferrara, c. 1430-1470

Patricia Malone (Celtic, 2009): "Entirely Outside the World": Rhetoric, Legitimacy, and Identity in the Biography of Gruffudd ap Cynan

† Laurance Maney (Celtic, 1999): High-Kings and Holy Men: Hiberno-Latin Hagiography and the Uí Néill Kingship, ca. 650-750

Craig Martin (History of Science, 2002): Interpretation and Utility: The Renaissance Commentary Tradition on Aristotle's Meteorologica IV

Fay Martineau (Divinity, 2006): Envisioning Heaven with Faith, Imagination, and Historical relevance: Selected Writings from Early and Medieval Christianity

Zachary Matus (Religion, 2010): Heaven in a Bottle: Franciscan Apocalypticism and the Elixir, 1250-1360

Maria Mavroudi (Byzantine Studies, 1998): The so-called Oneirocriticon of Achmet: A Byzantine Book on Dream Interpretation and its Arabic Sources

Anne McClanan (History of Art, 1998): Empress, Image, State: Imperial Women in the Early Medieval World

Nancy McKinley (English, 1991): Poetry vs. Paraphrase: The Artistry of Genesis A

James McMenamin (Romance Languages, 2008): The Sequence "Beginning-Middle-End," Dante and Petrarch

Joseph McMullen (Celtic Languages and English, 2015): Echoes of Early Irish Influence in Anglo-Saxon Literary Landscapes

Lawrence Morris (Comparative Literature, 2002): Veritas and literary fiction in the hagiography of the pre-Norman British Isles

Paula Molloy (Anthropology, 1993): Cod , commerce, and climate: A case study from late medieval/early modern Iceland

Alexander More (History, 2014): At the Origins of Welfare Policy: Law and the Economy in the Pre-Modern Mediterranean (AD 1150-1350)

Elizabeth Mozzillo-Howell (Romance Languages, 1998): Dante 's Art of Reason: A Study of Medieval Logic and Semantics in the Monarchy

Aisha Musa (NELC, 2004): A Study of Early and Contemporary Muslim Attitudes toward Hadīth as Scripture with Translation of al-Shāfi ʹ ī's Kitāb Jimāʹ al-ʹIlm

Emire Muslu (Middle Eastern Studies, 2007): Ottoman -Mamluk Relations: Diplomacy and perceptions

Erez Naaman (NELC, 2009): Literature and literary people at the court of Al-Ṣāḥib Ibn 'Abbād

Alexander Nagel (History of Art, 1993): Michelangelo , Raphael and the altarpiece tradition

Rae Ann Nager (Comparative Literature, 1990): The Poetria nova as a Poetics: Geoffrey of Vinsauf's Lex sit danda poetis

Nevra Necipoglu (History, 1990): Byzantium Between the Ottomans and the Latins: A Study of Political Attitudes in the Late Palaiologan Period, 1370-1460

Leonard Neidorf (English, 2014): The Origins of Beowulf: Studies in Textual Criticism and Literary History

Ingrid Nelson (English, 2010): The Lyric in England, 1200-1400

Mark Nevins (English, 1993): The Literature of Curiosity: Geographical and Exploration Writings in Early Northern Europe

Lena Norrman (Germanic Languages, 2006): Women's Voices, Power, and Performance in Viking Age Scandinavia

Barnaby Nygren (History of Art, 1999): The Monumental Saint's Tomb in Italy, 1260-1520

Joshua O'Driscoll (History of Art, 2015): Image and Inscription in the Painterly Manuscripts from Ottonian Cologne

Lisi Oliver (Linguistics, 1995): The language of the early English laws

Katharine Olson (Celtic, 2008): Fire from heaven: Popular religion and society in Wales, c. 1400--1603

Julie Orlemanski (English, 2010): Symptomatic subjects: Diagnosis, narrative, and embodiment in Middle English literature

Ada Palmer (History, 2009): Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance

Cameron Partridge (Divinity, 2008): Transfiguring sexual difference in Maximus the Confessor

Stephen Partridge (English, 1992): Glosses in the manuscripts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales : An edition and commentary

Gregory Pass (History, 1996): Source studies in the early secular lordship of the bishops of Mende

Jennifer Paxton (History, 1999): Charter and chronicle in twelfth-century England: The house-histories of the Fenland abbeys

Bissera Pentcheva (History of Art, 2001): Images and icons of the virgin and their public in middle Byzantine Constantinople

Kristin Peterson (History of Science, 1993): Translatio libri Avicennae De viribus cordis et medicinis cordialibus Arnaldi de Villanova

Susan Phillips (English, 1999): Gossip's work: the problems and pleasures of not-so-idle talk in late medieval England

Simone Pinet (Romance Languages, 2002): Archipelagoes: insularity and fiction in medieval and early modern Spain

Prydwyn Piper (Celtic, 2001): Mabinogi Iessu Grist : An edition and study of the Middle Welsh translations of the apocryphal Latin Pseudo-Matthaei evangelium

Amy Powell (History of Art, 2004): Repeated forms: Rogier van der Weyden's Descent from the Cross and its "copies"

Francisco Prado-Vilar (History of Art, 2002): In the shadow of the Gothic idol: The Cantigas de Santa Maria and the imagery of love and conversion

Debra Prager (Germanic Languages, 2003): Orienting the self: Encounters with the Eastern other in German narrative fiction

Jennifer Pruitt (History of Art, 2009): Fatimid architectural patronage and changing sectarian identities (969-1021)

Ghada Qaddumi (NELC, 1990): A medieval Islamic book of gifts and treasures: Translation, annotation, and commentary on the Kitāb al-Hadāyā wa al-tuḥaf

Tahera Qutbuddin (NELC, 1999): Al-Mua̓yyad fī al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī: Founder of a new tradition of Fatimid Dawa poetry

Lynn Ramey (Romance Languages, 1997): Christians and Saracens: Imagination and cultural interaction in the French Middle Ages

Emmanuel Ramírez-Nieves (Comparative Literature, 2015): Repenting Roguery: Penance in the Spanish Picaresque Novel and the Arabic and Hebrew Maqama

Chase Robinson (History, 1992): The early Islamic history of Mosul

James Robinson (NELC, 2002): Samuel Ibn Tibbon's Commentary on Ecclesiastes

Nicolas Rofougaran (History of Science, 2000): Avicenna and Aquinas on individualism

Maria Roglieri (Romance Languages, 1994): "Uror, et in uaco pectore regnat amor": The influence of Ovid's amatory works on Dante's Vita nuova and Commedia

Panagiotis Roilos (Classics, 1999): Generic modulations in the medieval Greek learned novels

Maria Romagnoli (Romance Languages, 1996): Andreas Capellanus: Issues of identity, reception and audience

John Romano (History, 2007): Ritual and society in early medieval Rome

Elizabeth Ross (History of Art, 2004): Picturing knowledge and experience in the early printed book: Reuwich's illustrations for Breydenbach's Pereginatio in terram sanctam (1486)

Gidon Rothstein (NELC, 2003): Writing Midrash Avot: The Change That Three Fifteenth Century Exegetes Introduced to Avot Interpretation, Its Impact and Origins

Leyla Rouhi (Romance Languages, 1995): A Comparative Typology of the Medieval Go-Between in Light of Western-European, Near-Eastern, and Spanish Cases

Steven Rozenski (English, 2012): Henry Suso and Richard Rolle: Devotional Mobility and Translation in Late-Medieval England and Germany

Elisha Russ-Fishbane (NELC, 2009): Between Politics and Piety: Abraham Maimonides and his Times

Stephen Ryan (NELC, 2001): Studies in Bar Salibi's Commentary on the Psalms

Claire Sahlin (Religion, 1996): Birgitta of Sweden and the Voice of Prophecy: A Study of Gender and Religious Authority in the Later Middle Ages

Elizabeth Scala (English, 1994): Absent Narratives: Medieval Literature and Textual Repression

Rebecca Schoff (English, 2004): Freedom from the Press: Reading and Writing in Late Medieval England

Iklil Selcuk (Middle Eastern Studies, 2009): State and Society in the Marketplace: A Study of Late Fifteenth-Century Bursa

Mark Sendor (NELC, 1994): The Emergence of the Provençal Kabbalah: Rabbi Isaac the Blind's Commentary on Sefer Yeẓirah

Daniel Sheffield (NELC, 2012): In the Path of the Prophet: Medieval and Early Modern Narratives of the Life of Zarathustra in Islamic Iran and Western India

Maryann Shenoda (History, 2010): Lamenting Islam, Imagining Persecution: Copto-Arabic Opposition to Islamization and Arabization in Fatimid Egypt (969-1171 CE)

James Skedros (Divinity, 1996): St. Demetrios of Thessaloniki: Civic Patron and Divine Protector (4th-7th c. CE)

Ewa Slojka (Comparative Literature, 2006): The Pious Knight: Crusading Ideals, Purgatory, and Grail Romances

Rachel Smith (Religion, 2012): Exemplarity and its Limits in the Hagiographical Corpus of Thomas of Cantimpré

Laura Smoller (History, 1991): History, prophecy, and the stars: The Christian astrology of Pierre d'Ailly, 1350-1420

Theoharis Stavrides (History, 1996): The Ottoman Grand Vezir Mahmud Pasha Angelovic (1453-1474)

Daniel Stein Kokin (History, 2006): The Hebrew question in the Italian Renaissance: Linguistic, cultural, and mystical perspectives

Gregg Stern (Religion, 1995): Menahem Ha-Meiri and the second controversy over philosophy

Kristen Stilt (Middle Eastern Studies, 2004): The Muḥtasib, Law, and Society in Early Mamluk Cairo and Fustat (648-802/1250-1400)

David Strain (English, 1992): Occasional poetics: The politics and poetics of fiction in Chaucer's House of Fame , Parliament of Fowls , and Legend of Good Women

Anne Stone (Music, 1994): Writing rhythm in late medieval Italy: Notation and musical style in the manuscript Modena, Biblioteca estense, Alpha.M.5.24

Justin Stover (Classics, 2011): Reading Plato in the twelfth century: A study on the varieties of Plato's reception in the Latin west before 1215

Carol Symes (History, 1999): The makings of a medieval stage: Theatre and the culture of performance in thirteenth-century Arras

Emily Tai (History, 1996): Honor among Thieves: Piracy, Restitution, and Reprisal in Genoa, Venice, and the crown of Catalonia-Aragon, 1339-1417

Adena Tanenbaum (NELC, 1993): Poetry and Philosophy: The Idea of the Soul in Andalusian Piyyut

Nathaniel Taylor (History, 1995): The Will and Society in Medieval Catalonia and Languedoc, 800-1200

Anne Thayer (Religion, 1996): Penitence and Preaching on the Eve of the Reformation: A Comparative Overview from Frequently Printed Model Sermon Collections, 1450-1520

Lucille Thibodeau (Comparative Literature, 1990): The Relation of Peter Abelard's Planctus Dinae to Biblical Sources and Exegetic Tradition: A Historical and Textual Study

Jane Tolmie (English, 2001): Persuasion: Blood-feud, Romance and the Disenfranchised

Timothy Tomasik (Romance Languages, 2003): Textual Tastes: The Invention of Culinary Literature in Early Modern France

Deborah Tor (Middle Eastern Studies, 2002): From holy warriors to chivalric order: The Ayyars in the eastern Islamic world, A.D. 800-1055

Nicolette Trahoulia (History of Art, 1997): The Venice Alexander romance, Hellenic Institute codex Gr. 5: A study of Alexander the Great as an imperial paradigm in Byzantine art and literature

Nicolas Trépanier (History, 2008): Food as a window into daily life in fourteenth century Central Anatolia

Elly Truitt (History of Science, 2007): From magic to mechanism: Medieval automata, 1100—1550

Ece Turnator (History, 2013): Turning the Economic Tables in the Medieval Mediterranean: The Latin Crusader Empire and the Transformation of the Byzantine Economy, ca. 1100-1400

Raquel Ukeles (Religion, 2006): Innovation or Deviation: Exploring the Boundaries of Islamic Devotional Law

Phillip Usher (Romance Languages, 2004): The Holy Lands in Early Modern Literature: Negotiations of Christian Geography and Textual Space

Claire Valente (History, 1997): Generations of Revolt: Reform, Rebellion, and Political Society in Later Medieval England, 1258-1415

Bruce Venarde (History, 1992): Women, Monasticism, and Social Change: The Foundation of Nunneries in Western Europe, c. 890-c. 1215

Paolo de Ventura (Romance Languages, 2003): Dramma e Dialogo nella Commedia di Dante

Marco Antonio Viniegra (History of Science, 2013): Neoclassical Medicine: Transformations in the Hippocratic Medical Tradition from Galen to the Articella

Nargis Virani (NELC, 1999): "I am the nightingale of the merciful": Macaronic or Upside-down? The mulammaʻāt of Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī

Alicia Walker (History of Art, 2004): Exotic Elements in Middle Byzantine Secular Art and Aesthetics, 843-1204 C.E.

Laura Wang (English, 2014): Natural Law and the Law of Nature in Early British Beast Literature

Jeffrey Webb (History, 2009): Cathedrals of Words: Bishops and the Deeds of their Predecessors in Lotharingia, 950-1100

Jessica Weiss (Comparative Literature, 2003): Herbert of Bosham's Liber melorum : Literature and Sacred Sciences in the Twelfth Century

Amanda Wesner (Music, 1992): The Chansons of Loyset Compère: Authenticity and Stylistic Development

Dan Wiley (Celtic, 2000): An Edition of Aided Diarmata meic Cerbaill from the Book of Uí Maine

Ryan Wilkinson (History, 2015): The Last Horizons of Roman Gaul: Communication, Community, and Power at the End of Antiquity

Emily Wood (History, 2009): The Execution of Papal Justice in Northern France, 1145-1198

Jeffrey Woolf (NELC, 1991): The Life and Responsa of Rabbi Joseph Colon b. Solomon Trabotto (Maharik)

Annelies Wouters (Classics, 2003): The Meaning of Formal Structure in Peter Abelard's Collationes

Lisa Wurtele (née Karp) (NELC, 1992): Sahl b. Hârǔn: The man and his contribution to 'adab

Suzan Yalman (History of Art, 2011): Building the Sultanate of Rum: Memory, urbanism and mysticism in the architectural patronage of 'Ala al-Din Kayqubad (r. 1220-1237)

Hikmet Yaman (NELC, 2008): The Concept of Hikmah in Early Islamic Thought

Julian Yolles (Classics, 2015): Latin Literature and Frankish Culture in the Crusader States (1098-1187)

Anna Zayaruznaya (Music, 2010): Form and Idea in the Ars Nova Motet

Sarah Zeiser (Celtic Languages, 2012): Latinity, Manuscripts, and the Rhetoric of Conquest in Late-Eleventh-Century Wales

Dissertations by Ph.D. - Granting Department

Anthropology

Paula Molloy (1993): Cod , commerce, and climate: A case study from late medieval/early modern Iceland

Committee on Byzantine Studies

Maria Mavroudi (1998): The so-called Oneirocriticon of Achmet: A Byzantine book on dream interpretation and its Arabic sources

Celtic Languages and Literatures

Paul Jefferiss (1991): Literary theory and criticism in medieval Ireland

Kaarina Hollo (1992): A critical edition of Fled Bricrenn ocus loinges mac nDuíl Dermait

Brian Frykenberg (1994): Poetry of Suibne Geilt and St. Mo-Ling from Brussels Bibliothèque Royale MS. 5100-04

Anne Lea (1995): Contextualizing the Gorhoffeddau : A study in the intellectual background of two medieval Welsh poems

Katherine Forsyth (1996): The Ogham inscriptions of Scotland: An edited corpus

Barbara Hillers (1997): The medieval Irish Odyssey Merugud Uilixis meic Leirtis

Nancy Breen (1999): Towards an edition of Di astud chirt ⁊ dligid

Kathryn Chadbourne (1999): The otherworld procession in Irish and Welsh literature and folklore

Heather Larson (1999): The women's voice in Gaelic poetry

† Laurance Maney (1999): High-kings and holy men: Hiberno-Latin hagiography and the Uí Néill kingship, ca. 650-750

Dan Wiley (2000): An edition of Aided Diarmata meic Cerbaill from the Book of Uí Maine

Prydwyn Piper (2001): Mabinogi Iessu Grist : An edition and study of the Middle Welsh translations of the apocryphal Latin Pseudo-Matthaei evangelium

Diana Luft (2004): Medieval Welsh translation: the case of Ymddiddan Selyf a Marcwlff

Benjamin Bruch (2005): Du gveras a.b.c/An pen can hanna yv d : Cornish verse forms and the evolution of Cornish prosody, c. 1350-1611

Hugh Fogarty (2005): A critical edition of the Middle Irish saga Aided Guill meic Carbada ocus Aided Gairb Glinni Rígi

Charlene Eska (née Shipman) (2006): An edition of Cáin Lánamna : an Old Irish tract on marriage and divorce law

Bettina Kimpton (2006): An edition of Brislech mór maige murthemni

Kathryn Izzo (2007): The Old Irish hymns of the Liber Hymnorum : A study of vernacular hymnody in medieval Ireland

Katharine Olson (2008): Fire from heaven: Popular religion and society in Wales, c. 1400-1603

Patricia Malone (2009): "Entirely outside the world": Rhetoric, legitimacy, and identity in the biography of Gruffudd ap Cynan

Christina Chance (2010): Imagining empire: Maxen Wledic, Arthur, and Charlemagne in Welsh literature after the Edwardian conquest

Matthieu Boyd (2011): The source of enchantment: The Marvels of Rigomer ( Les Mervelles de Rigomer ) and the evolution of Celtic influence on medieval francophone storytelling

Aled Jones (2011): Ol wrth ol attor ar eu hennyd: Political Prophecy in the Earliest Welsh Manuscripts, c. 1250-c. 1540

Jennifer Knight (2011): Self and society in early Irish literature

Panagiotis Agapitos (1990): Narrative structure in the Byzantine vernacular romances: A textual and literary study of Kallimachos , Belthandros and Libistros

Sophia Georgiopoulou (1990): Theodore II Dukas Laskaris (1222-1258) as an author and an intellectual of the XIIIth century

Marc Laureys (1992): An edition and study of Giovanni Cavallini's Polistoria de virtutibus et dotibus Romanorum

Panagiotis Roilos (1999): Generic modulations in the medieval Greek learned novels

Bridget Balint (2002): Hildebert of Lavardin's "Liber de querimonia" in its cultural context

Annelies Wouters (2003): The meaning of formal structure in Peter Abelard's Collationes

Emmanuel Bourbouhakis (2006): "Not composed in a chance manner": The epitaphios for Manuel I Komnenos by Eustathius of Thessalonike: text, translation, commentary

Justin Lake (2008): Rhetorical and narrative studies on the Historiae of Richer of Saint-Remi

Sarah Insley (2011): Constructing a sacred center: Constantinople as a holy city in early Byzantine literature

Justin Stover (2011): Reading Plato in the twelfth century: A study on the varieties of Plato's reception in the Latin west before 1215

Comparative Literature

Rae Ann Nager (1990): The Poetria nova as a poetics: Geoffrey of Vinsauf's Lex sit danda poetis

Lucille Thibodeau (1990): The relation of Peter Abelard's Planctus Dinae to biblical sources and exegetic tradition: A historical and textual study

Leslie Dunton-Downer (1992): The obscene poetic self in Rutebeuf and Chaucer

Sheryl Forste-Gruppe (1996): Signifying acts: Writing in the Middle English romances

Fatemeh Azinfar (1999): Doubt , dissent and skepticism in the literary tradition of the medieval period

Bernard Lumpkin (1999): The making of a medieval outlaw: Code and community in the Robin Hood legend

Christopher Livanos (2001): Greek and Latin traditions in the work of George Gennadios Scholarios

Lawrence Morris (2002): Veritas and literary fiction in the hagiography of the pre-Norman British Isles

Jessica Weiss (2003): Herbert of Bosham's Liber melorum : Literature and sacred sciences in the twelfth century

Henry Bayerle (2004): Speakers in the Latin historical epics of twelfth-century Italy

Ewa Slojka (2006): The pious knight: Crusading ideals, purgatory, and grail romances

Sally Livingston (2008): Owning property, being property: Medieval and modern women shape the narratives of marriage

Divinity School

James Skedros (1996): St. Demetrios of Thessaloniki: Civic patron and divine protector (4th-7th c. CE)

Fay Martineau (2006): Envisioning heaven with faith, imagination, and historical relevance: Selected writings from early and medieval Christianity

Cameron Partridge (2008): Transfiguring sexual difference in Maximus the Confessor

English Language and Literature

Feng Xiang (1990): Chaucer and the Romaunt of the Rose : A new study in authorship

Susan Deskis (1991): Proverbial backgrounds to the sententiae of Beowulf

Jeffrey Gross (1991): "Such stuff as dreams are made on": The poetics of narrative voice in Chaucer's Book of the Duchess

Nancy McKinley (1991): Poetry vs. paraphrase: The artistry of Genesis A

William Bennett (1992): Interrupting the word: Mankind and the politics of the vernacular

Jeffrey Cohen (1992): The tradition of the giant in early England: A study of the monstrous in folklore, theology, history and literature

Elizabeth Fowler (1992): The contingencies of person: Studies in the poetic and legal conceits of early modern England

Stephen Partridge (1992): Glosses in the manuscripts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales : An edition and commentary

David Strain (1992): Occasional poetics: The politics and poetics of fiction in Chaucer's House of Fame , Parliament of Fowls , and Legend of Good Women

Christopher Cannon (1993): The making of Chaucer's English: A study in the formation of a literary language

Mark Nevins (1993): The literature of curiosity: Geographical and exploration writings in early northern Europe

Elizabeth Scala (1994): Absent narratives: Medieval literature and textual repression

Lianna Farber (1998): Legitimacy in late medieval England

Susan Phillips (1999): Gossip's work: The problems and pleasures of not-so-idle talk in late medieval England

Margaret Kim (2000): Visions of theocratics: The discourse of politics and the primacy of religion in Piers Plowman

Jane Tolmie (2001): Persuasion: Blood-feud, romance and the disenfranchised

Katharine Horsley (2004): Poetic visions of London civic ceremony, 1360-1440

Rebecca Schoff (2004): Freedom from the press: Reading and writing in late medieval England

Jason Crawford (2008): Personification and its discontents: Studies from Langland to Bunyan

Julie Orlemanski (2010): Symptomatic subjects: Diagnosis, narrative, and embodiment in Middle English literature

Ingrid Nelson (2010): The lyric in England, 1200-1400

Margaret Healy-Varley (2011): Anselm's fictions and the literary afterlife of the Proslogion

Germanic Languages and Literatures

William Carroll (1995): Latin education and secular German literature: An analysis of Latin grammar instruction and its influence on middle high German poets

William Layher (1999): Queen Eufemia's legacy: Middle low German literary culture, royal patronage, and the first old Swedish epic (1301)

Debra Prager (2003): Orienting the self: Encounters with the Eastern other in German narrative fiction

Lena Norrman (2006): Women's voices, power, and performance in Viking Age Scandinavia

Nevra Necipoglu (1990): Byzantium between the Ottomans and the Latins: A study of political attitudes in the late Palaiologan period, 1370-1460

Laura Smoller (1991): History, prophecy, and the stars: The Christian astrology of Pierre d'Ailly, 1350-1420

Josiah Blackmore (1992): Fernão Lopes and the writing of history in the Crónica de D. João I

Nadia El Cheikh (1992): Byzantium viewed by the Arabs

David Keck (1992): The angelology of Saint Bonaventure and the harvest of medieval angelology

Chase Robinson (1992): The early Islamic history of Mosul

Bruce Venarde (1992): Women, monasticism, and social change: The foundation of nunneries in Western Europe, c. 890-c. 1215

Craig Kennedy (1994): The Juchids of Muscovy: A study of personal ties between émigré Tatar dynasts and the Muscovite grand princes in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries

Nathaniel Taylor (1995): The will and society in medieval Catalonia and Languedoc, 800-1200

Philip Daileader (1996): The medieval community of Perpignan, 1162-1397

† Elka Klein (1996): Power and patrimony: The Jewish community of Barcelona, 1050-1250

Adam Kosto (1996): Making and keeping agreements in medieval Catalonia, 1000-1200

Gregory Pass (1996): Source studies in the early secular lordship of the bishops of Mende

Theoharis Stavrides (1996): The Ottoman Grand Vezir Mahmud Pasha Angelovic (1453-1474)

Emily Tai (1996): Honor among thieves: Piracy, restitution, and reprisal in Genoa, Venice, and the crown of Catalonia-Aragon, 1339-1417

Robert Berkhofer (1997): Monastic patrimony, management and accountability in Northern France, ca. 1000-1200

Demetrios Kyritses (1997): The Byzantine aristocracy in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries

Claire Valente (1997): Generations of revolt: Reform, rebellion, and political society in later medieval England, 1258-1415

Alan Cooper (1998): Obligation and jurisdiction: Roads and bridges in medieval England (c. 700-1300)

Elizabeth Haluska-Rausch (1998): Family, property, and power: Women in medieval Montpellier, 985-1213

Jennifer Paxton (1999): Charter and chronicle in twelfth-century England: The house-histories of the Fenland abbeys

Carol Symes (1999): The makings of a medieval stage: Theatre and the culture of performance in thirteenth-century Arras

Anthony D'Elia (2000): In praise of matrimony: Italian renaissance humanists on marriage and sexual pleasure

Dimiter Angelov (2002): Imperial ideology and political thought in Byzantium, 1204-ca. 1330

Samantha Herrick (2002): Imagining the sacred past in hagiography of early Normandy: The Vita Taurini , Vita Vigoris and Passio Nicasii

Jonathan Conant (2004): Staying Roman: Vandals, Moors, and Byzantines in late antique North Africa, 400-700

Zayde Antrim (2005): Place and belonging in medieval Syria, 6th/12th to 8th/14th centuries

Daniel Stein Kokin (2006): The Hebrew question in the Italian Renaissance: Linguistic, cultural, and mystical perspectives

Janna Bianchini (née Wasilewski) (2007): Regina : The life of Berenguela of Castile, 1180--1246

Jennifer Davis (2007): Patterns of power: Charlemagne and the invention of medieval rulership

Justine Firnhaber-Baker (2007): Guerram publice et palem faciendo : Local war and royal authority in late medieval southern France

Kyle Harper (2007): Slavery in the late ancient Mediterranean

John Romano (2007): Ritual and society in early medieval Rome

Koray Durak (2008): Commerce and networks of exchange between the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic Near East from the early ninth century to the arrival of the Crusaders

John Gagné (2008): French Milan: Citizens, occupiers, and the Italian Wars, 1499-1529

Rachel Goshgarian (2008): Beyond the social and the spiritual: Redefining the urban confraternities of late medieval Anatolia

Patrick Baker (2009): Illustrious men: Italian renaissance humanists on humanism

Erik Heinrichs (2009): The plague cure: Physicians, clerics and the reform of healing in Germany, 1473--1650

Ada Palmer (2009): Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance

Jeffrey Webb (2009): Cathedrals of words: Bishops and the deeds of their predecessors in Lotharingia, 950-1100

Emily Wood (2009): The execution of papal justice in northern France, 1145-1198

Maryann Shenoda (2010): Lamenting Islam, imagining persecution: Copto-Arabic opposition to islamization and arabization in Fatimid Egypt (969-1171 CE)

Kelly Gibson (2011): Rewriting history: Carolingian reform and controversy in biographies of saints

History of Art and Architecture

John Hutton (1992): Rural buildings in Netherlandish painting, ca. 1420-1570

Nuha Khoury (1992): The mihrab concept: Palatial themes in early Islamic religious architecture

Megan Holmes (1993): Frate Filippo Di Tommaso Dipintore : Fra Filippo Lippi and Florentine Renaissance religious practices

Alexander Nagel (1993): Michelangelo , Raphael and the altarpiece tradition

Geraldine Johnson (1994): In the eye of the beholder: Donatello's sculpture in the life of Renaissance Italy

Nicolette Trahoulia (1997): The Venice Alexander romance, Hellenic Institute codex Gr. 5: A study of Alexander the Great as an imperial paradigm in Byzantine art and literature

Anne McClanan (1998): Empress, image, state: Imperial women in the early medieval world

Lars Jones (1999): Visio divina, exegesis, and beholder-image relationships in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Indications from donor figure representations

Barnaby Nygren (1999): The monumental saint's tomb in Italy, 1260-1520

Bissera Pentcheva (2001): Images and icons of the Virgin and their public in middle Byzantine Constantinople

Cynthia Hall (2002): Treasury book of the passion: Word and image in the Schatzbehalter

Francisco Prado-Vilar (2002): In the shadow of the Gothic idol: The Cantigas de Santa Maria and the imagery of love and conversion

Persis Berlekamp (2003): Wonders and their images in late medieval Islamic culture: "The Wonders of Creation" in Fars and Iraq, 1280-1388

David Drogin (2003): Representations of Bentivoglio authority: Fifteenth-century painting and sculpture in the Bentivoglio Chapel, San Giacomo Maggiore, Bologna

Amanda Luyster (2003): Courtly images far from court: The family Saint-Floret, representation, and romance

Amy Powell (2004): Repeated forms: Rogier van der Weyden's Descent from the Cross and its "copies"

Elizabeth Ross (2004): Picturing knowledge and experience in the early printed book: Reuwich's illustrations for Breydenbach's Pereginatio in terram sanctam (1486)

Alicia Walker (2004): Exotic elements in middle Byzantine secular art and aesthetics, 843-1204 C.E.

Diliana Angelova (2005): Gender and imperial authority in Rome and early Byzantium, first to sixth centuries

Jenny Ataoguz (2007): The apostolic commissioning of the monks of Saint John in Müestair, Switzerland: Painting and preaching in a Churraetian Monastery

Danielle Joyner (2007): A timely history: Images and texts in the Hortus Deliciarum

Aden Kumler (2007): Visual translation, visible theology: Illuminated compendia of spiritual instruction in late medieval France and England

Jennifer Pruitt (2009): Fatimid architectural patronage and changing sectarian identities (969-1021)

Shirin Fozi (2010): The body recast and revived: Figural tomb sculpture in the Holy Roman Empire, 1080--1160

Ivan Drpić (2011): Kosmos of verse: Epigram, art, and devotion in later Byzantium

Seth Hindin (2011): History and ethnic commitment in the visual culture of medieval Bohemia, ca. 1200-ca. 1420

Suzan Yalman (2011): Building the Sultanate of Rum: Memory, urbanism and mysticism in the architectural patronage of 'Ala al-Din Kayqubad (r. 1220-1237)

History of Science

Alnoor Dhanani (1991): Kalām and Hellenistic cosmology: Minimal parts in Basrian Muʻtazilī atomism

Elaheh Kheirandish (1991): The medieval Arabic tradition of Euclid's Optika

Kristin Peterson (1993): Translatio libri Avicennae De viribus cordis et medicinis cordialibus Arnaldi de Villanova

Nicolas Rofougaran (2000): Avicenna and Aquinas on individualism

Craig Martin (2002): Interpretation and utility: The renaissance commentary tradition on Aristotle's Meteorologica IV

Elly Truitt (2007): From magic to mechanism: Medieval automata, 1100--1550

Linguistics

John Harkness (1991): An approach to the metrical behavior of Old English verbs

Lisi Oliver (1995): The language of the early English laws

Committee on Middle Eastern Studies

Leor Halevi (2002): Muhammad 's grave: Death, ritual and society in the early Islamic world

Deborah Tor (2002): From holy warriors to chivalric order: The Ayyars in the eastern Islamic world, A.D. 800-1055

Kristen Stilt (2004): The muḥtasib, law, and society in early Mamluk Cairo and Fustat (648-802/1250-1400)

Dimitris Kastritsis (2005): The Ottoman interregnum (1402-1413): Politics and narratives of dynastic succession

Emire Muslu (2007): Ottoman -Mamluk relations: Diplomacy and perceptions

Nicolas Trépanier (2008): Food as a window into daily life in fourteenth century Central Anatolia

Ahmed El Shamsy (2009): From tradition to law: The origins and early development of the Shāfi‘ī School of Law in ninth-century Egypt

Timothy Fitzgerald (2009): Ottoman methods of conquest: Legal imperialism and the city of Aleppo, 1480-1570

Iklil Selcuk (2009): State and society in the marketplace: A study of late fifteenth-century Bursa

Amanda Wesner (1992): The chansons of Loyset Compère: Authenticity and stylistic development

Anne Stone (1994): Writing rhythm in late medieval Italy: Notation and musical style in the manuscript Modena, Biblioteca estense, Alpha.M.5.24

Thomas Kozachek (1995): The repertory of chant for dedicating churches in the Middle Ages: Music, liturgy, and ritual

Noël Bisson (1998): English polyphony for the Virgin Mary: The votive antiphon, 1430-1500

Michael Cuthbert (2006): Trecento fragments and polyphony beyond the codex

Christina Linklater (2006): Popularity, presentation and the Chansonnier Saint-Germain-des-Prés

Evan MacCarthy (2010): Music and learning in early Renaissance Ferrara, c. 1430-1470

Anna Zayaruznaya (2010): Form and idea in the Ars Nova motet

Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

Barbara Croken (1990): Zabîd under the Rasulids of Yemen, 626-858 AH/ 1229-1454 AD

Ghada Qaddumi (1990): A medieval Islamic book of gifts and treasures: Translation, annotation, and commentary on the Kitāb al-Hadāyā wa al-tuḥaf

Pauline Eskenasy (1991): Antony of Tagrit's Rhetoric book one: Introduction, partial translation, and commentary

Jeffrey Woolf (1991): The life and responsa of Rabbi Joseph Colon b. Solomon Trabotto (Maharik)

Lisa Wurtele (née Karp) (1992): Sahl b. Hârǔn: The man and his contribution to 'adab

Daphna Ephrat (1993): The Sunni ʻulama ʾ of eleventh-century Baghdad and the transmission of knowledge: A social history

Eric Lawee (1993): "Inheritance of the fathers": Aspects of Isaac Abarbanel's stance towards tradition

Adena Tanenbaum (1993): Poetry and philosophy: The idea of the soul in Andalusian Piyyut

Michael Cooperson (1994): The heirs of the prophets in classical Arabic biography

Mark Sendor (1994): The emergence of the Provençal kabbalah: Rabbi Isaac the Blind's Commentary on Sefer Yeẓirah

Tahera Qutbuddin (1999): Al-Mua̓yyad fī al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī: Founder of a new tradition of Fatimid Dawa poetry

Nargis Virani (1999): "I am the nightingale of the merciful": Macaronic or upside-down? The mulammaʻāt of Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī

Angela Jaffray (2000): At the threshold of philosophy: A study of al-Fārābī's introductory works on logic

Stephen Ryan (2001): Studies in Bar Salibi's commentary on the Psalms

Rahim Acar (2002): Creation: A comparative study between Avicenna's and Aquinas' positions

James Robinson (2002): Samuel Ibn Tibbon's Commentary on Ecclesiastes

Bruce Fudge (2003): The major Qurʼān commentary of al-Ṭabrisī (d. 548/1154)

Gidon Rothstein (2003): Writing Midrash Avot: The change that three fifteenth century exegetes introduced to Avotinterpretation, its impact and origins

Aisha Musa (2004): A study of early and contemporary Muslim attitudes toward Hadīth as scripture with translation of al-Shāfi ʹ ī's Kitāb Jimāʹ al-ʹIlm

Ahmad Ahmad (2005): Structural interrelations of theory and practice in Islamic law: A study of Takhrīj al-Furūʻ ʻalá al-Uṣūl literature

Sinān Antūn (2006): The poetics of the obscene: Ibn al-Ḥajjāj and Sukhf

Hikmet Yaman (2008): The concept of hikmah in early Islamic thought

Yaron Klein (2009): Musical instruments as objects of meaning in classical Arabic poetry and philosophy

Erez Naaman (2009): Literature and literary people at the court of Al-Ṣāḥib Ibn 'Abbās

Elisha Russ-Fishbane (2009): Between politics and piety: Abraham Maimonides and his times

Gabriella Berzin (2010): The Medieval Hebrew version of psychology in Avicenna's Salvation ( Al-Najāt )

Committee on the Study of Religion

Dianne Bazell (1991): Christian diet: A case study using Arnald of Villanova's De esu carnium

Rosemary Hale (1992): Imitatio Mariae : Motherhood motifs in late medieval German spirituality

Gregg Stern (1995): Menahem Ha-Meiri and the second controversy over philosophy

Claire Sahlin (1996): Birgitta of Sweden and the voice of prophecy: A study of gender and religious authority in the later Middle Ages

Anne Thayer (1996): Penitence and preaching on the eve of the Reformation: A comparative overview from frequently printed model sermon collections, 1450-1520

Luis Girón Negrón (1997): Alfonso de la Torre's Visión deleytable : Philosophical rationalism and the religious imagination in fifteenth-century Spain

Lisa Lawrence (2002): The Irish and the incarnation: Images of Christ in the Old Irish poems of Blathmac

Christian Lang (2006): Executing justice in Sunnī Islam: Historical, poetical, eschatological and legal dimensions of punishment under the Saljūqs (1055-1194 CE)

Raquel Ukeles (2006): Innovation or deviation: Exploring the boundaries of Islamic devotional law

Mary Dunn (2008): Sainte-Anne-du-Petit-Cap: The making of an early modern shrine

Zachary Matus (2010): Heaven in a bottle: Franciscan apocalypticism and the elixir, 1250-1360

F. Dominic Longo (2011): Spiritual grammar: A comparative theological study of Jean Gerson's Donatus moralizatus and Abd al Karim al-Qushayri's Nahw al-qulub

Romance Languages and Literatures

Gary Cestaro (1990): The whip and the wet nurse: Dante's De vulgari eloquentia and the psychology of grammar in the Middle Ages

Carol Dover (1990): Nature, nurture and the hero: Narrating identity in the old French prose Lancelot

Roberto Gonzalez-Casanovas (1990): Predicación y narrativa en Ramón Llull: De imagen a semejanza en Blanquerna

William Cole (1991): Romance to tragedy: A comparative study of the Tristan poems of Béroul and Gottfried

Gregory Hutcheson (1993): Marginality and empowerment in Baena's Cancionero

Maria Roglieri (1994): "Uror, et in uaco pectore regnat amor": The influence of Ovid's amatory works on Dante's Vita nuova and Commedia

Mark DeStephano (1995): Feudal relations in the Poema de mío Cid : Comparative perspectives in medieval Spanish and French epic

Leyla Rouhi (1995): A comparative typology of the medieval go-between in light of Western-European, Near-Eastern, and Spanish cases

Kathryn Karczewska (1996): In days of future past: Prophecy and knowledge in the French vulgate grail legends

Benjamin Liu (1996): Equivocal poetics and cultural ambiguity in the Cantigas d'escarnho e de mal dizer

Maria Romagnoli (1996): Andreas Capellanus: Issues of identity, reception and audience

Lynn Ramey (1997): Christians and Saracens: Imagination and cultural interaction in the French Middle Ages

Elizabeth Mozzillo-Howell (1998): Dante 's art of reason: A study of medieval logic and semantics in the Monarchy

Marilina Falzarano (1999): Il volgarizzamento dei seitte salmi penitenziali di Simone Da Cascina

Horacio Chiong Rivero (2002): Maker of masks: Fray Antonio de Guevara's pseudo-historical fictionalizations

Elisabeth Hodges (2002): City views: Writing and the topography of Frenchness and the Renaissance

Simone Pinet (2002): Archipelagoes: Insularity and fiction in medieval and early modern Spain

Irit Kleiman (2003): Traitor, author, text: Four late medieval narratives of betrayal

Timothy Tomasik (2003): Textual tastes: The invention of culinary literature in early modern France

Paolo de Ventura (2003): Dramma e dialogo nella Commedia di Dante

Phillip Usher (2004): The Holy Lands in early modern literature: Negotiations of Christian geography and textual space

Ji-Hyun Kim (2005): For a modern medieval literature: Gaston Paris, courtly love, and the demands of modernity

James McMenamin (2008): The sequence "beginning-middle-end," Dante and Petrarch

Catherine Adoyo (2011): The order of all things: Mimetic craft in Dante's Commedia

Slavic Languages and Literatures

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Medieval Histories

Medieval Theses

Each year, hopeful young scholars publish their theses on medieval history as well as archaeology, literature, art. the following list is not comprehensive. but we register what we find with links to the depositories.

Power Couples: The Substance and Representation of Royal Power in England, 1272-1377 By Tullis, Tatum University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 2024

Queens of Heaven and earth: Marian devotion and Aristocratic Culture in twelfth-Century France. By Anna Schlender Lukyanova. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 2024

The Manuscript Circulation and Use of Bede’s Martyrology and Religious Practice in Carolingian and Post-Carolingian Europe, to c. 1250 By Falardeau, Kate University of Cambridge 2024

A Language of Snakes: Supernatural Objects in Viking Age Scandinavia By Andrea C. Snow College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Art, Art History Program

From the late-eighth through the early-twelfth centuries, the Germanic people of medieval Scandinavia (colloquially known as the Vikings) crafted enigmatic objects that were bound to a cultural acceptance of the supernatural. The material world was fundamentally linked to such a perspective: believing that things like carved pieces of bone and wood, metal apparatuses, and stone sculptures could hold or manipulate the unseen forces of the cosmos, they perceived the material world as alive, active, and powerful. Thus, crafted matter was not limited to aesthetically pleasing décor or functional tools—it was an agent through which the commingling of the sacred and the secular was made tangible. Scholars of medieval religion and history have argued that this worldview—dubbed a “magical way of thinking”—was intrinsic to the mindsets of the Scandinavian Middle Ages both before and after the region’s conversion to Christianity. Yet, despite the attention that medieval art historians have paid to the relationships between objects and beliefs in a supernatural (or divine) Other in contemporaneous, Abrahamic religious contexts, the art and material culture of the group at hand have been underserved. Substantial interpretive work needs to be done to untangle how these objects were connected to the uncanny. Asking not only how objects were embedded in supernatural power, but also through which methods were they endowed with such power and in what contexts it manifested, this project uses archaeological and textual evidence to formulate a new, art-historical framework for understanding the agency that this society assigned to the material world. Its aims are twofold: one, to suggest new routes for interpreting and understanding its relationship with crafted objects, and two, to push for further expansions in how these people are considered in scholarship and, eventually, in popular culture.

Scholars of kingship and queenship have long acknowledged that producing an heir was an expected duty for medieval queens and kings. Indeed, motherhood has been a focal point in medieval queenship scholarship since the field’s beginning in the 1980s. Scholars have explored the gendered ideal of queenship and shown that maternity was a key function of the king’s wife that enabled medieval queens to exert political influence. Recently, scholars have considered how queens without children were still able to successfully execute their role, by substituting social motherhood and other facets of queenship, like intercession and religious patronage, in place of biological motherhood. Kings needed heirs, but gendered analysis of kingship has been slower to develop than work on other medieval men, or queens, and while fatherhood has received some attention in relation to medieval masculinity, there is less study of the significance of successful fertility for the gendered role of medieval kings.

This thesis fills a space that exists between the work on medieval kingship, queenship and the nuanced approaches that are being developed in the new history of infertility. The conventional understanding of ‘infertility’ as the inability to conceive is limiting, and excludes incidences of secondary infertility, sub-fertility and other uncertainties of reproduction. This thesis investigates the significance and pressure for fertility on kings and queens, by focusing on how royal couples in thirteenth and fourteenth-century England and Scotland, many of whom were not always childless or conventionally infertile, still experienced reproductive difficulties and managed their fertility. The analysis is divided into four chapters, structured around questions about when and why royal childlessness was problematized, and how fertility problems and reproduction were managed by royal couples. The first chapter examines contemporary impressions of the royal couples’ fertility and expressions of concern about childlessness. It investigates how royal fertility was written about by chroniclers and uncovers attention to couples’ fertility which has been missed by scholarship because many of the couples ultimately did have children. It considers chroniclers’ association of reproduction with queens and argues that perceptions of the kings contributed to what chronicles state about royal fertility.

The second chapter identifies a pattern of behaviour in the devotional practices of three childless kings, and exposes a connection between the king’s behaviours, age and concerns about childlessness. This chapter suggests that royal couples experienced scrutiny of their fertility when the king reached the perfect age associated with masculine maturity in the male life course. The third chapter traces evidence of royal medical care and asks how we might identify reproductive medicine in payments to physicians and connections to medical practitioners and texts. The chapter illustrates key patterns in royal healthcare to illuminate how royal couples medically managed fertility. It argues that royal healthcare was gendered, and reproductive medicine was focused on the queen, but queens had an influential role in the transmission and control of the medical care accessed by the royal couple. The fourth chapter examines the spiritual practices used by royal couples to manage reproduction and remedy fertility problems. It argues that the spiritual practices for reproduction were carefully chosen communications to control perceptions of a couple’s fertility, while the spiritual management of fertility was used by couples to communicate broader politically significant messages too.

Ultimately, this thesis examines the pressure for fertility experienced by royal couples, and how they navigated this using medical and spiritual support. It moves on from questioning how queens and kings navigated their gendered role in the absence of reproduction and uncovers the significance of fertility for contemporary perceptions of kingship and queenship. It shows how the uncertainties of reproduction affected and were managed by kings and queens, but in different and gendered ways. Ultimately, the thesis demonstrates that a more open analysis of infertility is necessary for understanding with greater precision the experience of childlessness, and the importance of fertility for both gendered roles of kingship and queenship.

This thesis traces how the enchanted sleep motif common to both ATU 410 (Sleeping Beauty) and ATU 709 (Snow White) exists in the Bible and hagiography, before charting its subsequent appearance in medieval and early modern literature. Categorising the enchanted sleep and its various facets as the motif of the ‘sleeping corpse’, this thesis considers how two fairy tales, which appear to model Victorian patriarchal ideals of female passivity and male agency, have complex earlier iterations that undermine and subvert many of their contemporary core problematic tenets. Chapter One explores how the sleeping corpse motif can be considered analogous to the presentation of deceased saints in hagiography, examining how a sleeping corpse can also be an active, powerful, and often deadly member of a community. Chapter Two explores the motif in medieval romance, including in the first recorded written version of Sleeping Beauty and its subsequent European versions, where the motif is often used as part of rape narratives. Chapter Three examines how Elizabethan pastoral romance presents the male sleeping corpse as a product of the failure to self-govern passion, whilst Chapter Four explores how Shakespeare uses the motif to unpack ideas of familial loss and reunion, though not restoration. Finally, Chapter Five demonstrates how Jacobean revenge tragedy rejects past iterations of the motif in favour of using the sleeping corpse to portray murder and necrophilia on stage. Drawing together a vast and original corpus of genres and time periods, this thesis offers new ways of understanding two traditionally maligned fairy tales, as well as demonstrating how the motif speaks to our desire to pause time, delay the inevitability of death, and obtain a type of immortality.

This thesis utilises the data sets provided through the recording of historic graffiti within secular and religious buildings to analyse and draw a theoretical understanding of behaviour within Medieval Christian religious practice during a period of intense pilgrimage activity. The work focuses on the South of England and questions the nature of personal religious engagement within the church and cathedral specifically looking at the methods used by lay worshippers to gain independent access to the divine. To facilitate this study large volume of historic graffiti data has been recorded in Hampshire, Wiltshire, and West Sussex. This data has been analysed using geostatistical models to assess distribution and relative nearness of the marks to both known points within the built environment and to neighbouring marks. This data has then been compared to existing literary and historical texts to understand how the marks have interacted with personal prayer practice and the built landscape. The outcome of this study has been the generation of a theoretical framework that describes one form of interaction using graffiti as ritual doing within the generation of personal rituals of encounter that facilitate the exploration of a complex nested ontology within the built landscape. This nested ontology provides access to the divine in a ritually safe manner and permits lay worshippers to navigate the spiritual dangers an encounter with the divine without the guidance of a ritual authority.

Margaret of Burgundy (1374-1441) is known mainly for two reasons. Firstly, her marriage in 1385 to William of Bavaria, eldest son of the Count of Hainault, Holland and Zeeland, laid the foundation for the transfer of power in these principalities to the Burgundian dynasty some 50 years later. Secondly, she supported her only child Jacqueline of Bavaria, who fought many battles in order to prevent this. The combination of these two roles points to a conflict of interest. By supporting her daughter as the rightful Bavarian heir, Margaret inevitably came into conflict with members of her own dynasty of origin, the Valois Burgundians. The overarching question in the research presented in this thesis is what tilted the scales for Margaret as a political player in different phases of her life: was it her loyalty to the Burgundian or to the Bavarian dynasty, her connection with the Hook party in Holland, or was she driven mainly by self-interest, as is sometimes suggested? Related to this is the question whether her means were substantial enough to allow her to play her own game. In this biographical study, a chronological and a thematic approach have been combined. The loyalty question serves as guideline for the first part, in which the story of Margaret’s life is told chronologically within the broader context of political developments. The thematic second part is dedicated to her financial position as a widow, her court, and her religious and literary patronage.

In 1246, when Pope Innocent IV saw embroidered copes and mitres which were made in England, he exclaimed; “England is for us surely a garden of delights, truly an inexhaustible well; and from there where so many things abound…” Embroidery made between 1200-1350 in England, known as opus anglicanum, was internationally recognized, traded, gifted, collected, and coveted. The technical skill combined with a distinct aesthetic resulted in an iconic textile brand. Though first described as a brand in the context of contemporary imitated textiles, I extend this understanding by close visual analyses and archival readings. “Opus anglicanum: The Visual Language, Liturgical Rituals, and Gifting of a Medieval English Brand” argues for a quadripartite examination of the opus anglicanum brand, grounded in luxury brand theory. I articulate the technical and aesthetic hallmarks of the brand by examining archival records of embroiderers and the specific aspects of their work which differentiated opus anglicanum from other contemporary textile decorations. I then evaluate the opus anglicanum brand aesthetic by a close visual reading of its background designs and popular motifs, through which emerges the enduring relationship between manuscript illumination and embroidery design. As the majority of extant opus anglicanum textiles are ecclesiastic vestments, I then assess these textiles in the context of contemporary liturgical writings and rituals. As archival evidence indicates, opus anglicanum textiles were often presented as gifts. Therefore, I conclude by studying the effect of medieval English embroidery in the context of gift-giving rituals. This dissertation, while grounded in both medieval and modern scholarship, reevaluates these textiles and argues that the enduring legacy of opus anglicanum is due to its identity as a medieval brand.

Scholarship regarding the early medieval Welsh Marches is frequently disparate and disjointed. Studies have concentrated on the analysis of monuments, in part because of the paucity of early medieval archaeology upon which to create a tableau conducive to macro landscape-based research. Where syncretic works in the Welsh Marches have attempted to adopt an interdisciplinary approach, they are often dated, not embracing, or utilising new techniques or methods. This is exacerbated by approaches in archaeological remotes sensing that have focused on methods or only producing dots and lines on a map, rather than its application and integration into theoretical frameworks widening further the divide between theory and practice. Combined, these approaches also fail to integrate fully within discourses emerging in border studies, a critical field of study when analysing border regions. To tackle these challenges, this thesis examines the borderland landscape of the North and Central Marches using traditional geographical and archaeological techniques, combined with GIS and remote sensed methodologies such as lidar to offer new insight into processes of power and how that is reflected in the landscape. This research targets not only landscape morphology but embraces border theory on the expression and apparatus of power emphasising the ‘borderland’ as an active agent in territoriality and social processes. This study has analysed remote sensed data and data sets that have previously been underutilised and combined theoretical concepts into a holistic body of work. New or misinterpreted archaeological sites have been identified, adding to the archaeological knowledge of the region and facilitated an enhanced picture of the early medieval landscape. In addition, the interrelationship of boundaries and sites hitherto unrecognised in the Welsh Marches have collectively opened new avenues and concepts to underpin and augment further research on dyke systems and border formation processes.

In this dissertation the problems surrounding water management, a space where different economic and other socio-political interests met and sometimes clashed are addressed. Modern politics focuses on who has legitimate rights to claims in such disputes, but for historians, it is certainly more relevant to understand how such conflicts were approached and resolved in the past by posing questions about how pre-modern societies dealt with these same problems. These questions include what kind of disputes unfolded with regard to the use of water and the degree to which water conceived as private or as ‘common’? How were different interests aligned with each other? In this dissertation these questions are raised in the context of Central Europe, and more particularly, in the Kingdom of Hungary in the Middle Ages (from the ca. tenth century to the mid-sixteenth century), i.e. the period of the re- appearance of literacy in the area after the Roman period. Throughout the different chapters of the dissertation it is argued that use of water by the societies of the Kingdom of Hungary in the Middle Ages gave rise to fairly complex sets of customs and norms that, until the Modern times, were the most important principles in settling water use related disputes.

Against the background of production traditions, there is an opportunity to trace the external cultural interactions, manifested in various forms. An example of a model of technological development in early medieval Bulgaria is the production centers for metal art, which functioned in the first half of the 10th century in the vicinity of Preslav. Each region of metalworking has a complex structure in which the individual production areas are often far apart. They function according to the developed system of exchange with the various metallurgical fields, where the connection between them is determined not so much by economic compliance as by the degree of culture and traditions. The regularly located complexes of workshops show the presence of proximity in the location of the individual production areas, which is influenced by the cultural development of the early medieval Bulgarian community and the synchronous time of functioning. Metalworking has considerable autonomy and this is especially evident in the various stages of the technological process. Its distinctiveness is expressed in the specialization of the blacksmith’s trade, the special social and public status of the masters, the nature of the productive and trade relations, etc. The production of artistic metal is characterized by its own traditions and its own path of development, reflected in the history of alloys, production technology, the typology of metal inventory and the system of concepts. Local traditions are refracted through the prism of general practice in the development of production. Often these are established principles in technology and the individual stages in it, which retain their stability over time and reach both the Middle Ages and the New Age, with minor changes as a result of technical progress.

The subject of research is the rich collection of belt sets, received from the archaeological excavations of the three centres for the production of metal art from the early Bulgarian Middle Ages near Preslav – near Novosel , Zlatar and Nadarevo. The finds of belt sets in the three centres are the most numerous and mass-produced products, the number of which so far exceeds 3000. Along with them, the finds from the production centres received in the museum collections before the excavations were examined. This applies primarily to the third production centre near Nadarevo, Targovishte region. The study aims to investigate the production of artistic metal in early medieval Bulgaria on the basis of the numerous production of belt sets, collected as a result of 20 years of research of the first known specialized centres for metal plastics. As a result of archaeological excavations from 2004 to 2009, the first centre was studied – the one near Novosel, Shumen region. From 2007 to the present, the second production centre near Zlatar, Preslav region, is being studied with a short break. The centre near Nadarevo, Targovishte region was partially explored in the 1990s within one season. The number of finds in the National Museum in Sofia and the museum collections from all over Northeastern Bulgaria prove the existence of large-scale and organized production, in parallel with that of the other two complexes.

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Bede writing. Yates Thompson MS 26, © British Library

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Wicked witches or worldly women? Gender, power, and magic in medieval literature

Though other scholars have examined magic in medieval literature, this study provides a specific analysis of valkyries, their use of magic as a means of attaining adequate social power to gain freedom from a wholly domestic existence, and an analysis of how this representation contrasts with other contemporary English and French literary tendencies. This study examines the valkyries without the scholarly bias of wickedness and malevolence, which highlights their central position in Old Norse-Icelandic culture. Without the stigma of the categorization of "witched witches," it becomes clear that the valkyries were not marginalized women; rather, they were part of the mainstream cultural existence of Old Norse-Icelandic society. This study provides a fuller picture of the Germanic world, including Nordic, Icelandic, and Scandinavian cultures, and its literature---where women and men were valued based on their strength and fortitude, rather than solely on their biological sex.

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The Medieval Studies Program is supported by the  Humanities Council .

The Program in Medieval Studies at Princeton University encourages interdisciplinary study of the Middle Ages: its art, literature (Latin and vernacular), music, religion, science, philosophy, politics, and economic and social structures.

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Bulletin du centre d’études médiévales d’Auxerre | BUCEMA

Home Numéros 18.2 Dissertatio An Alternative History of the Gra...

An Alternative History of the Grail Quest

Index terms, mots-clés : , keywords: .

1 The thesis explores the representation and meaning of the Grail quest in medieval and modern literature, using the methodologies of historically informed criticism and gender criticism. It opens new perspectives on the Grail quest, regarding the quest as a unifying structural and moral motif that enables medieval and modern authors to engage with core existential issues – death, gender relations and history – in a unique way, influenced by the socio-historical context in which the texts were written. The corpus of texts encompasses medieval French and English Arthurian romances on the one hand – the anonymous Queste del Saint Graal and Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur – and the modern American, British and French novels that use medievalist tropes, notably the Grail quest, on the other hand – Walker Percy’s Lancelot , David Lodge’s Small World and Michel Zink’s Déodat .

• 1   On academic to approaches to medievalism in Francophone and Anglophone scholarship, see M. Gally a (...)

2 Comparing two sets of texts originating in different historical contexts advances our understanding of each text, because not only are the modern texts influenced by their medieval precursors, but also our perception of medieval Grail quest romances is modified by modern literature. Moreover, studying medieval and modern Grail quest literature side by side offers new insights into the phenomenon of modern medievalism  1 ; this approach brings out the differences between the Grail quest in texts composed in a society that shared a set of Christian values and those produced in a post-religious context. Research conducted in the thesis shows that the texts within each group differ from each other, highlighting the diversity and dynamism within medieval and modern societies themselves.

• 2  A.  Pauphilet (ed.), La Queste del Saint Graal, Roman du xiii e siècle , Paris, 1923 ; E.  Vinaver (ed (...)
• 3  A comprehensive and up-to-date list of the Queste bibliography is available on the ARLIMA database (...)
• 4  There have been, for instance, some studies of hermits in the Queste – see, for instance, P.  Jonin (...)

3 The medieval texts studied in the thesis are Thomas Malory’s «  Tale of the Sankgreal  » , – part of the Morte Darthur – , and its source, the anonymous French Queste del Saint Graal – part of the so-called Vulgate cycle of romance  2 . Malory’s romance remains popular among both medievalists and the general public, but the study of the «  Sankgreal  » is not always accompanied by a comparison to its original source in French, which Malory followed closely. In the last decades, the Queste has been extensively studied, mostly by French scholars  3 . However, with some exceptions, there is no substantial scholarship of either «  Sankgreal  » or the Queste that would seriously consider the importance of non-elect, minor or women characters in relation to the elect and major characters of the romances  4 .

• 5   W.  Percy , Lancelot, New York, 1977  ; D.  Lodge , Small World : An Academic Romance , London, 1984 ; M (...)

4 The modern novel writers, however, compensate for the scholarly lack of interest in minor characters. The three novels studied in the thesis allude to Malory’s Morte and the Queste , but the modern writers treat the heroism of Lancelot, Perceval and Galahad sceptically. Walker Percy’s novel Lancelot (1977) was inspired by Sidney Lanier’s adaptation of Malory’s Morte , yet Percy’s eponymous «  hero  » is a psychiatric patient, drunkard and criminal. David Lodge in Small World : An Academic Romance (1984) makes one of his main characters, Persse, a self-conscious quester, who is comically determined to preserve his moral and physical virginity in the midst of «  immoral  » academic community. Finally, the French medievalist Michel Zink in his novel Déodat, ou la transparence (2002), which is based on the Queste and other medieval sources, dismisses the elect knights Galahad and Perceval to the narrative periphery, concentrating instead on the experience of an obscure boy, Déodat  5 .

• 6  Accordingly, R. Olderman focuses on the American novels that explore the motif of the waste land, (...)

5 Despite the growth of studies in the field of medievalism, there has been no attempt to compare closely medieval and modern representations of the Grail quest. Studies of the Grail quest that mention both medieval and modern texts usually concentrate on one period  6 . Thus, the thesis contributes to the study of medieval and modern Grail quest literary traditions in English and French. The thesis invites the readers to review their perceptions of well-known medieval texts, which are studied from the perspective of minor, non-elect and episodic characters. Moreover, the thesis introduces the English audience to current French scholarship on the Grail quest literature and raises the awareness of modern Grail quest novels that have so far received little attention in the context of Arthurian studies.

6 The Introduction to the thesis tackles the question of why modern society needs the Grail quest, a motif routed in medieval culture that had a very different set of values. The aim of the chapter is to outline the role of medievalism in modern culture and the place of Arthuriana and the Grail quest within it. Subsequently, the chapter provides an overview of the project and its rationale, the sources and the methodology. The chapter also explains the reasons for concentrating on medieval and modern periods and for leaving out the early modern and Victorian periods, because the Romantic and Victorian versions of the Grail quest differ substantially from both medieval and modern Grail quest literature. Finally, the organisation of the book and its thematic arrangement are explained.

7 In chapter 1 of the thesis, I consider the theoretical underpinnings of chivalry, which underlay the narratives of the Queste and the « Sankgreal ». The ideology of medieval chivalry is an extensive field, so only two authors are discussed in the chapter : St Benedict, whose vision of spiritual chivalry is essential for reading the Queste , and Ramon Lull, whose works are important for the discussion of Malory’s representation of chivalry in the « Sankgreal ». Next, I examine the material expression of chivalric ideas, namely, the manuscript and early printed book tradition in which the Queste and the « Sankgreal » were preserved. I show that the popularity of the Queste and the « Sankgreal » in the Middle Ages and beyond makes these two texts particularly important for studying both medieval and modern concepts of the Grail quest. I also argue that the episodes of medieval romances examined in Chapters 2-4 are essential in the development of the plot and in the main characters’ quest, which is confirmed by the manuscripts’ and early printed books’ illustrative programmes.

8 Death was an ever-present contingency in the life of a medieval knight. Remarkably, throughout the Grail quest, the only knights who find their lives endangered are not only non-elect but also minor, those who receive little mention in the Queste and the « Sankgreal ». Although at the beginning of the Mort Artu it is mentioned that Sir Gawain murdered eighteen Arthurian knights, and there were others casualties as well, only three knights’ wounding and death are described in the course of the Grail quest : these knights are King Bagdemagus, Sir Yvain l’Avoutre and Sir Calogrenant. After the quest is achieved, Galahad leaves this world, followed by Perceval, but their deaths are peaceful, in difference from the violent deaths of non-elect knights. Chapter 2 demonstrates how the non-elect knights’ deaths compare to the deaths of Sir Galahad and Sir Perceval, arguing that the deaths of the non-elect and the elect knights are exemplary of contemporary ideas and practices associated with death and dying – the composition of wills, performance of the last rights and funeral practices.

9 In Chapter 3, I study two episodes in which Sir Lancelot and Sir Perceval spend time with female recluses, who give the knights spiritual advice. These recluses are quite unique, because knights are more usually instructed by hermits in both the Queste and the « Sankgreal », as well as in other chivalric romances. The analysis of these episodes, in which the knights mostly listen to recluses, contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of gender and power on the Grail quest. Moreover, the chapter shows that the recluses influence the knights by their example as well as by their words, leading Lancelot and Perceval to adopt a more patient attitude and to rely on God’s mercy rather than on their own prowess.

10 Chapter 4 focuses on the intersections between the world history, genealogy and the individual quester’s fortunes, using the example of Solomon’s ship episode. The flawed couple of King Solomon and his «  evyl wyff  » , to use Malory’s words, is contrasted to the perfect, spiritually united couple of Galahad and Perceval’s sister. The chapter begins by tracing attitudes towards marriage in the ecclesiastical discourse in England and France from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, including the importance of marriage for individual salvation as well as the roles and behaviours expected of spouses in marriage. Next, I compare the treatment of Solomon and his wife in the Estoire del Saint Graal – which precedes the Queste in the Vulgate cycle, but was probably composed later than the Queste –, the Queste and the «  Sankgreal  » . I demostrate that, while Solomon’s wife falls short of the expected or ideal behaviour for a wife, Perceval’s sister acts towards Galahad with diffidence and affection ( affectio ) a good wife was expected to display, thus becoming an ideal companion for Galahad – but their union is still spiritual rather than carnal.

11 Part II of the thesis is devoted to the Grail quest in three modern novels. Given the chronological and cultural gap between medieval Grail quest romances and modern literature, it is only natural that the Grail quest in the modern novels, which provide material for Chapters 5-7, will have a very different form and meaning. However, there is good reason for comparing the medieval and modern Grail quest versions directly, rather than considering early modern, Romantic and Victorian manifestations of medievalism, because the latter medievalist versions of the Grail quest are very distinct from both their medieval forerunners and their modern « heirs ». Thus, for Victorian authors, this quest is directed towards the achievement of a local and moral aim rather than towards the spiritual redemption of a particular group of people. Meanwhile, in both medieval romances and modern novels considered in Chapters 5-7, the quest is aimed at the redemption of a particular group, if not of all mankind.

12 Moreover, by focusing on minor characters, women and non-elect knights – who have previously been little studied – in Chapters 1-4, I provide a bridge between medieval and modern versions of the Grail quest. The experiences of medieval characters who appear on the margins of the main narrative are instrumental for understanding both the context in which the romances’ major characters operate and the image of questers in modern literature, which often places the unheroic, ordinary or even deviant characters into the limelight. The modern novels studied in Chapters 5-7 use the Christian motif of the Grail quest to structure their narratives, adopting medieval tropes for a post-religious age. Unsurprisingly, modern authors prioritise the perspective of minor, marginal or ordinary, unheroic characters, which results in decentralizing the authoritative «  master narrative  » of the medieval Grail quest. The modern novel presents a new type of quester – a flawed, imperfect individual, essentially different from the superhuman Galahad, and this change encourages the reader to sympathise with the Grail questers. In medieval romances, non-elect knights also provide certain models, which the original readers could repudiate or sympathise with, because not everyone could expect to reach Sir Galahad’s level of perfection, albeit, as a Christian, everyone was called to aspire to this ideal. Indeed, medieval non-elect knights and minor characters can provide a foil to the elect questers and major characters at the same time as nuancing their experiences.

13 In fact, some aspects of modern Grail quest literature can be better accessed by a scholar of the Middle Ages than by a modernist. In the Queste and the « Sankgreal », the questers’ achievement constitutes a kind of redemption of chivalry, despite the fact that the earthly Round Table fellowship is destroyed in the succeeding narratives – the French Mort and the last book of Malory’s Morte . Likewise, in Walker Percy’s Lancelot , the main characters, Lancelot and Percival, strive for the moral and spiritual redemption of contemporary America. In David Lodge’s Small World , Persse MacGarrigle « saves » the discipline of literary criticism from the aridity and stagnation that would overtake it if a single literary theory triumphed, and, as I show in Chapter 6, Lodge’s academic novel presents, in microcosm, the more general concerns of modern society. Michel Zink’s protagonist, Déodat, in the eponymous novel Déodat, ou la transparence, not only realizes that spiritual transparency and charity can bring the individual closer to God, but also tries to share his revelation with the people he meets, Yvain the Knight of the Lion and the girl at the well. In a sense, modern questers, like Galahad, strive and occasionally succeed in « redeeming » the modern post-religious world from the loss of meaning associated with the denial of belief in spiritual reality.

14 The Conclusion returns to the phenomenon of modern medievalism and summarizes the links between the medieval and modern Grail quest narratives. It highlights those aspects of medieval culture that are particularly attractive in the modern world, namely, strategies of coping with death and bereavement, gender relations and ideas about family and history. These issues, which were far from controversial in late medieval France and England, appear in retrospect as unproblematic and reassuring to modern audiences of medieval romances. The authors of the modern Grail quest novels, however, do not use this nostalgia for the Middle Ages uncritically, warning their readers that medieval societies had their own problems.

15 By closely engaging with medieval and modern versions of the Grail quest and by examining the medieval romances through the experience of minor and non-elect characters, the thesis offers a new perspective not only on the studied texts but also on the entire tradition of the Grail quest in medieval and modern literature. Moreover, the thesis contributes to the burgeoning field of medievalist studies, showing how modern texts can reveal new meanings when examined in the light of medieval tradition to which they allude, both directly and indirectly.

Reçu : 29 août 2014 – Accepté : 24 novembre 2014

1   On academic to approaches to medievalism in Francophone and Anglophone scholarship, see M. Gally and V. Ferré , « Médiévistes et modernistes face au médiéval », Perspectives médiévales , 35 (2014), [http://peme.revues.org/5761] ; DOI : 10.4000/peme.5761 [October 30, 2014].

2  A.  Pauphilet (ed.), La Queste del Saint Graal, Roman du xiii e siècle , Paris, 1923 ; E.  Vinaver (ed.), P. J. C.  Field (rev), The Works of Sir Thomas Malory , 3 vol., Oxford, 1990.

3  A comprehensive and up-to-date list of the Queste bibliography is available on the ARLIMA database, [www.arlima.net/qt/queste_del_saint_graal.html ; October 30, 2014]. See also the bibliography issued as part of Programme d’agrégation 2004-2005, Loxias , 7, 2004. Important earlier studies were reprinted in D. Hüe , and S. Menegald o (eds), Les chemins de « La queste ». Études sur « La queste del saint Graal » , Orléans, 2004. In writing the thesis, I also found very helpful E. Baumgartner , L’arbre et le pain. Essai sur « La Queste del Saint Graal » , Paris, 1981.

4  There have been, for instance, some studies of hermits in the Queste – see, for instance, P.  Jonin, « Des premiers ermites à ceux de La Queste del Saint Graal  », Annales de la faculté des lettres et sciences humaines d’Aix , 44 (1968), p. 293-350, repr. in Les chemins de « La queste » , p. 203-223 ; for the study of hermits in the Vulgate cycle, see I. Weill , « Le Clerc et “l’hermite preudome” dans le “Lancelot-Graal” », in Le clerc au Moyen Âge, Aix-en-Provence, 1995 [http://books.openedition.org/pup/2499 ; November 17, 2014]. However, female recluses, who are discussed in Chapter 3 of the thesis, have been previously considered only by I. Vedrenne-Fajolles, «  À propos des recluses de la Queste del Saint Graal ( ca 1225-1230) », Loxias, littératures française et comparée [revue électronique, CTEL, U. de Nice] , 7 (2004) [http://revel.unice.fr/loxias/index.html?id=95 ; October 30, 2014].

5   W.  Percy , Lancelot, New York, 1977  ; D.  Lodge , Small World : An Academic Romance , London, 1984 ; M.  Zink , Déodat. Un roman du Graal, Paris, 2002. Michel Zink’s works on medieval French literature, especially Arthurian romances, are discussed both in Part 1 (Chapters 1-4) and in Chapter 7 of the thesis. Of particular relevance here are Poésie et conversion au Moyen Âge , Paris, 2003 and La Subjectivité littéraire autour du siècle de saint Louis , Paris, 1985, transl. D.  Sices , The Invention of Literary Subjectivity , Baltimore and London, 1999.

6  Accordingly, R. Olderman focuses on the American novels that explore the motif of the waste land, but he does not consider the medieval sources of the motif – R. Olderman , Beyond the Waste Land : A Study of the American Novel in the Nineteen-Sixties , New Haven, 1972 . In turn, J. B. Marino provides a summary of medieval Grail quest romances before embarking on a study that seems to encompass all modern Grail quest fiction written in English – J. B. Marino , The Grail Legend in Modern Literature, Cambridge, 2008. A. Lupack and B. T. Lupack consider the development of American Arthurian literature, including the Grail quest motif, from its origins, but do not, naturally, discuss medieval sources. As a result, the section on Walker Percy’s novels relates the writer’s work to the American tradition of Arthurian literature, but not to medieval literature, of which Percy shows at least some awareness in his novels – A.  Lupack and B. T.  Lupack , King Arthur in America, Cambridge and Rochester, 2001. A notable exception to the tendency to concentrate on either medieval or modern period is the collections of essays, which can encompass medieval and modern literature, as well as cinema, art and music. The Arthurian Way of Death brings together essays that extend from medieval through Victorian to modern Arthuriana, the collection, however, is restricted to the English tradition – K.  Cherewatuk and K. S.  Whetter ( eds), The Arthurian Way of Death. The English Tradition, Cambridge and Rochester, 2009 ( Arthurian Studies , 74). On the other hand, The Grail, the Quest, and the World of King Arthur , provides material mostly on medieval Grail quest literature and art in different European traditions, with only the last three chapters out of fourteen considering the Grail in post-medieval context – N. J. Lacy (ed.), The Grail, the Quest, and the World of King Arthur , Cambridge and Rochester, 2008 ( Arthurian Studies , 72).

Electronic reference

Anastasija Ropa , “ An Alternative History of the Grail Quest ” ,  Bulletin du centre d’études médiévales d’Auxerre | BUCEMA [Online], 18.2 | 2014, Online since 19 December 2014 , connection on 09 September 2024 . URL : http://journals.openedition.org/cem/13538; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/cem.13538

About the author

Anastasija ropa.

Independent Scholar, Latvia ; Bangor University (UK), Alumna ; University of Latvia, Alumna

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• Female Authority during the Knights’ Quest ? Recluses in the Queste del Saint Graal [Full text] Published in Bulletin du centre d’études médiévales d’Auxerre | BUCEMA , 20.1 | 2016

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Madness and Gender in Late-Medieval English Literature

JOSE, LAURA (2010) Madness and Gender in Late-Medieval English Literature. Doctoral thesis, Durham University.

This thesis discusses presentations of madness in medieval literature, and the ways in which these presentations are affected by (and effect) ideas of gender. It includes a discussion of madness as it is commonly presented in classical literature and medical texts, as well as an examination of demonic possession (which shares many of the same characteristics of madness) in medieval exempla. These chapters are followed by a detailed look at the uses of madness in Malory’s Morte Darthur, Gower’s Confessio Amantis, and in two autobiographical accounts of madness, the Book of Margery Kempe and Hoccleve’s Series. The experience of madness can both subvert and reinforce gender roles. Madness is commonly seen as an invasion of the self, which, in a culture which commonly identifies masculinity with bodily intactness, can prove problematic for male sufferers. Equally, madness, in prompting violent, ungoverned behaviour, can undermine traditional definitions of femininity. These rules can, however, be reversed. Malory’s Morte Darthur presents a version of masculinity which is actually enhanced by madness; equally divergent is Margery Kempe’s largely positive account of madness as a catalyst for personal transformation. While there is a certain consistency in the literary treatment of madness – motifs and images are repeated across genres – the way in which these images are used can alter radically. There is no single model of madness in medieval literature: rather, it is always fluid. Madness, like gender, remains open to interpretation.

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Fairies and the Fairy World in Middle English Literature: the Orpheus Tradition from the Classical Era to the Middle Ages

By Beatrice Berti

Master’s Thesis, Università degli Studi di Padova, 2016

Introduction: Having grown up with Disney classics such as Cinderella and Pinocchio (and many others, of course), I have always imagined fairies to look like Fairy Godmother and Blue Fairy. One day, while flipping through Burrow’s and Turville-Petre’s A Book of Middle English, my attention was caught by a relatively short poem called Sir Orfeo. I read the introduction to it and thumbed through most of the poem, which made me realise that Disney fairies were likely to have nothing to do with those of that poem.

I decided I wanted to know more about those “medieval fairies”: were there other Middle English poems where I could find them? And how far in history were the origins of fairy creatures to be found? So, when I discovered that Middle English literature is such a reservoir of fairy world material, I decided to devote my master thesis to it.

Click here to read this thesis from Università degli Studi di Padova

Top Image: Text of Sir Orfeo from British Library MS Harley 3810   f. 1 

Related Posts

• "'The king o fairy with his rout': Fairy Magic in the Literature of Late Medieval Britain" by Hannah Priest
• “With fairi forth y-nome”: The Representation of the Fairy World in Sir Orfeo
• Dante's Metam-Orpheus: the Unspoken Presence of Orpheus in the Divine Comedy
• Three Fairy Tale Romances for Valentine’s Day
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The Wyndonshire Wedding: Theatrical and Community Medievalism

In my recent blog discussing a new form of theatrical medievalism in which I have become immersed—allowing me both a creative and intellectual outlet—I centered my discussion on my creative direction and process and how my studies in medieval literature informed my directive style at two local Renaissance Faires in North Central Massachusetts which I was involved with managing, organizing and directing,  Wyndonshire Renaissance Faire  at the  Community Park  in Winchendon, MA and  Enchanted Orchard Renaissance Faire  at  Red Apple Farm  in Phillipston, MA. Wyndonshire, the first of these faires, will be the center of my discussion today as I explore the way this project engaged local performers, vendors and community members who came together to cocreate an event that revitalized the town and region. It was also a lot of fun, especially when it all came together on the final weekend in April last year.

Wyndonshire began with an idea proposed by Parks and Recreation Member Dawn Higgins, who championed the initiative and served as RenFaire Coordinator this past year, helping coordinate costume clinics for character actors with Costume Coordinator, Ashley Rust, and vendors with then Park and Recreation Coordinator, Tiffany Newton. My wife, Rajuli Fahey, and I joined on as community members and part of the Planning Group for Winchendon’s RenFaire initiative, but came to wear many hats and serve in numerous roles, including as Creative, Theatrical and Entertainment Directors. Well before directing and academic consulting, I began with world-building a fantasy kingdom, drawing inspiration from town history, and applying my knowledge of medieval culture and lore to imbue the scripts I created as Wyndonshire Playwright . I drew also from my studies and love of medievalism in considering the audience and to both appeal to and surprise patrons. And, as mentioned in my previous blog , I modeled my approach in part on the aesthetic of wonder operative in many of my favorite works of medieval literature.

Creating the characters was a blast. I conceived of three main houses, and three primary nobles vying for power: the Blue King (James Higgins), the Green Queen (Tammy Dykstra), and the Red Baron (Dave Fournier). Rajuli created the graphic art for Wyndonshire, and she suggested noble family’s crest included a local animal as a sigil, so we chose the stag for the king, the otter for the queen and the fox for the baron. I also created a host of characters to populate the kingdom: townsfolk, rogues, pirates, vikings, knights, ministers, and additional nobility. There are also wondrous creatures from literature, myth and legend: fairies, merfolk, witches and sirens. Of course, this conglomerate of fictitious characters borrows from medieval and modern traditions, and reaches into the realm of the imaginary. Wyndonshire can only be described as a historical and literary anachronism and amalgamation. In this way, this faire is full fantasy, designed to appeal broadly to audiences interested in premodern and early modern times or their perception of those earlier historical periods. In other words, designed to meet the expectations of those who would typically attend a modern Renaissance Faire.

It was at this point that magic truly began happening, and it came from the local community. At our auditions, the synergy was palpable—dozens of folks came out to try and embody one of my characters or contribute their creative touch to this growing community project. There were people from different backgrounds coming together to cocreate immersive theater—some folks were part of community theater productions, others were veteran “Rennies” and even Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying groups got involved. Everyone rose up and became a creative team. One example of many was the work of Tammy Dykstra, who was cast as the Green Queen, and later stepped into the role of Music Director, taking on a group of singers, with a spectrum of training and experience. Assisted by Planning Group member, Jacque Ellis, Tammy and the Wyndonshire Singers produced a masterful “pub sing” that was engaging for both spectators and participants, and provided some ribaldry, entertainment and comic relief against a plot that was otherwise often grim and tragic.

Rajuli also organized a collaborative Belly Dance Showcase which paid homage to this RenFaire tradition and brought three regional performance troupes together: her own group, Nagashri Dancers , Our Dance Space   led by Rachel Moirae & PsyBEL led by Cheryl Kalilia. Each troupe choreographed its dance and performance contributions to the showcase, but when others were performing, spectating troupes added percussive accompaniment which highlighted the collaborative and community spirit of the faire. From there, Wyndonshire spired outward, as performers and vendors were reaching out looking to get involved in the expanding project.

Numerous performance, historical reenactment, theatrical and musical groups donated services, sometimes for free and more often at discounted rates, to help get this event off the ground since initial funding was limited and in large part came from Massachusetts Cultural Council grants. Everyone pitched in to make the event possible, including   The Knights of Lord Talbot ,  Meraki Caravan ,  The Phoenix Swords ,  The Shank Painters ,  The Harlot Queens ,  The Warlock Wondershow ,  The Misfits of Avalon , Dead Gods are the New Gods,   The Green Sash,   The Mt. Wichusett Witches , and solo performers, such as stilts walker, LaLoopna Hoops , and fire dancer, Noodle Doodle.

Signage was of course an essential element of the faire as well, both because signs add to the atmosphere and create the physical space, and because they helpfully direct patrons where to go. Another community member, Micayla Sullivan, who also played the Robber Baroness, took the lead on this and other crucial aspect of stagecraft as our “Sign Smith” along with a handful of other character actors. All the raw wood for the signs was donated from a local lumber company, Killay Timber Company in Royalston, MA, which made the production of Wyndonshire signage possible even without a budget. Similarly, local hardware store, Belletetes in Winchendon, MA, donated lumber to create the Wyndonshire gate, which James Higgins (who played the Blue King) and Dawn Higgins constructed for the event. Furthermore, local recording studio Blu3Kat Records volunteered to support the event’s sound management, and members from the local artist collective, Eldwood Council (especially Jacob Bohlen and Tom Fahey), partnered with FaeGuild Wonders , in order to create and build second main stage, the Mirage Stage, at Wyndonshire Renaissance Faire .

As performers and vendors were signing up to be part of the Wyndonshire, characters deepened and developed alongside and in tandem with my scripting. The first act of this faire, which will run one more year (June 21-22, 2025), involves conflict between the Blue King and the Green Queen for sway over the realm of Wyndonshire, with the Red Baron biding his time and waiting for any opportunity to climb into greater power. To avoid open war, in an attempt at “peace-weaving” if you will, the Blue King offers his daughter’s hand in marriage to the Green Queen’s son, thereby uniting the realm and settling the question of authority. Of course, each noble is still plotting their opponent’s’ demise, as the game of thrones continues subversively, and breaks out at the wedding feast, resulting in usurpation and regicide.

In order to achieve the action scene in a manner that was safe and professional, we called upon the expertise of Frank Walker (Green Champion) who embraced the role of Combat Coordinator and worked out the staged combat with his historical reenactment group, The Knights of Lord Talbot , and in particular David Geary (Blue Champion) and Cameron Hardy (Red Champion), who were also performing combat demonstrations and facilitating a tournament of champions with historical weaponry and armor earlier in the day. Needless to say, this dramatically enhanced the plot and overall theatrical delivery of the climactic scene, and highlights how it was not just the cast of character actors but also performing groups who were collaborating to produce the drama of the Wyndonshire Wedding.

Some performing groups contained some scripted character actors that were part of the core cast. For example, the Mt. Wichusetts Witches came to Wyndonshire and set the stage for the carnage, and instrumental in twisting fate and turning the wheel of fortune. They contributed to the physical space by creating the Witches’ Den on the borders of the Faywood, where desperate Wyndonshire nobility come to make illicit pacts in service of their respective aims. The Mt. Wichusetts Witches, especially Wyndonshire’s Weird Sisters (Kate Saab, Chrissy Brady and Siobhan Doherty), who engaged in multiple immersive skits where they made magical bargains with representatives of the noble houses, culminating in a flash mob spell at the royal wedding that allowed the Green Prince (Drew Dias) to escape with the Fairy Prince (Sasha Khetarpal-Vasser) and the Blue Princess (Melanie “Melegie” Lemony) with the Siren (Jessa Funa), before smoke clears and the subsequent chaos erupts.

But the regicide was not the end of the action. After the Green Queen seems to have consolidated power and claims unilateral victory, there is another surprise in store: a peasants revolt instigated by a rogue rebellion, overlooked by the Sheriff of Shirewood (Jennifer MacLean) and led by the Robber Baroness (Micayla Sullivan) with the Hooded Rogue (Mitch Lang), Masked Bandit (Mandaline Blake), the Pirate Queen (Katharine Taylor) with her Pirate Quartermaster [Jarod Tavares] and the Green Sash, led by Viking Jarl (Jason Sumrall) with his Berserker (Andrew Hamel), Shieldmaidens (Sylvia Sandridge, Sara Hulseberg, Ashley Sumrall & Gabrielle Emond) and Thanes (Gary Joiner, Daniel Berry, Jeffery Allen Evans, Matthew LeBlanc, Henry Peihong Tsai, Gavin Leo, Richard Sprusanky, Joshua Coffin, et al. ).

Indeed, The Green Sash, a “live history” and historical reenactment group (organized by Jason Sumrall) built and became our Viking settlement at the RenFaire. This group not only helped build the world of Wyndonshire, but like The Knights of Lord Talbot and Mt. Wichusetts Witches, The Green Sash became an integral part of the plot and interwoven into the story, contributing numerous immersive theatrical skits throughout the event, including singing and raiding Wyndonshire Town with the Wizard, conspiring with rogues and pirates to overthrow the nobility, and ultimately aiding the people’s revolution at the conclusion of the faire.

Another interwoven subplot at Wyndonshire involved the misadventures of the Fairy Court in the Faywood, which was primarily organized by Amy Boscho in partnership with Emilie Davis and many others. Amy is a local business owner and community member who was also part of the Planning Group for the faire, and she both directed the immersive theatrics surrounding the Fairy Court and coordinated the vendors at the Fay Marketplace in the Fairy Grove near Wyndonshire Gate. Moreover, to further develop the mythic elements near Faywood, professional mermaids, led by Tolkien scholar, Shae Rossi, adorned the shore of the nearby pond at the Winchendon Community Park.

By the end of the process, almost every character was cocreating at some level with the actor playing them, and in one case, one of the character actors, Jessa Funa, (who played the Siren character) even collaborated with me on an immersive subplot centered on fairy romance between herself and the Blue Princess. The sheer extent of community contributions to this event was truly incredible and has inspired me to interlace the storyline of Wyndonshire with its sister faire, so the two plots will interact and events at Wyndonshire will ultimately affect the fate of Enchanted Orchard. A project of this scope and magnitude takes a team—a village—and I am honored to be part of such a collaborative community, now FaeGuild Wonders , which was inspired to participate in a this exciting form of public medievalism.

Additionally, Park and Recreation Chair, Deb Bradley stepped up when the faire needed a liaison, and served as a stage manager during the event, a second representative from the Winchendon Park and Recreation Commission who played a critical role in the planning and operations of the faire. And, Red Apple Farm partnered in advertising the event and as one of the major food vendor, providing standard RenFaire snacks and specialty cider imported from the neighboring agrarian realm of Enchanted Orchard . In 2026, the plot for Wyndonshire progresses to Act 2, “The Reign of the Rogue Council” which picks up with the Green Queen in the Wyndonshire Dungeon, and the rogue leaders in power.  As we plan to run Act 1 “The Wyndonshire Wedding” again next year, if you missed out this spring, luckily there is still another chance to attend in 2025 (June 21-22 nd ).

Richard Fahey Ph.D. in English Medieval Institute University of Notre Dame Creative, Entertainment & Theatrical Director Playwright & Academic Consultant Wyndonshire Renaissance Faire

Crafting a New Kind of Renaissance Faire: Theatrical Medievalism and the Aesthetic of Wonder

I am always looking for my next adventure, and so this past year I took a risk and wandered into new territory. Through creative partnership with my wife, Rajuli Fahey, and the many folks involved in what became FaeGuild Wonders , we together built not one but two inaugural Renaissances Faires in Massachusetts . Rajuli served as Art & Entertainment Director, and Stage Manager (and one of the Vending Coordinators at the latter faire), I served as Creative & Theatrical Director, Playwright and Academic Consultant for both Wyndonshire Renaissance Faire at the Community Park in our resident town of Winchendon, MA and Enchanted Orchard Renaissance Faire at Red Apple Farm just down the road in nearby Phillipston, MA.

Public medievalism has long been a professional interest and personal passion of mine, and although I enjoy scholarship and traditional ways of academically engaging with medieval history, literature and culture, I am also drawn to the fantastic and wondrous, to the creative and adaptive, and it has long been a personal dream to produce full-scale Renaissance Faire that takes medieval literature and the aesthetic of wonder as its creative direction. Indeed, during my PhD studies at the University of Notre Dame, I organized a small-scale theatrical production called Grendelkin , which featured innovative and avant-garde performances related to Beowulf , which brought together musical artists, professional dancers and early medieval English scholars.

The project’s scope expanded well beyond anything I might have anticipated when I signed on to be a Member of a Planning Group in our small Town of Winchendon , agreeing to create characters and produce a script, storyline and lore for Park & Recreation Member Dawn Higgins ’ RenFaire initiative. Of course, there were many challenges to overcome along the way, some from the nature of startup projects and some from the circumstances surrounding organizing two distinct faires with very different models and storylines, which debuted back-to-back weekends this spring. While my blog today is in part a celebration of both events, it will center primarily on the creative inspiration and direction that shape both Renfaires and the world-building aspects that allowed me to leverage my expertise and love of medieval literature, especially that which contains monstrous and wondrous elements, in my creative process.

However, before we dive too deep into the creative process, a brief description of both faires is in order: Wyndonshire Renaissance Faire

For this faire, Rajuli and I both volunteered our professional services in order to support our town, local community and the beautiful amphitheater at the Winchendon Community Park. As the project grew so did our roles in the production of Wyndonshire. What began as a modest endeavor bloomed into a full-blown production that welcomed and engaged the local art community. Although all of the characters are fictitious (some cocreated with the character actors themselves), I based the House names around prominent families from Winchendon (the Murdocks and Whitneys in particular), though there is no intended relationship (allegorical or otherwise) between the Wyndonshire nobles and said historical families. This year’s plotline centered around “The Wyndonshire Wedding” between the Blue Princess (played by Melony “Melegie” Lemony) and Green Prince (played by Drew Dias). The wedding is coupled with political intrigue and subterfuge, resulting in a contest for power between the Blue King (played by James Higgins), Green Queen (played by Tammy Dykstra) and Red Baron (played by Dave Fournier) and culminating in a peasant revolt featuring rogues, pirates and marauders led by the Robber Baroness (played by Micayla Sullivan), the Pirate Queen (played by Katharine Taylor) and the Viking Jarl (played by Jason Sumrall).

Enchanted Orchard Renaissance Faire

After Wyndonshire was underway, this faire was conceived in collaboration with a local farm and festival venue, Red Apple Farm , owned by Al and Nancy Rose, who were excited to cocreate an event such as this in order to advertise their growing business, provide interactive and experience-based agricultural awareness, bring tourism to the surrounding area and support both the regional economy and artist community. Enchanted Orchard Renaissance Faire features fictitious characters and storylines that are centered on sustainable farming practices and agrarian life which was the bedrock for the medieval world. The main conflict concerns a disagreement between the nobles as to whether or not to expand the orchard or preserve the forest, with the Orchard King (played by Paul Taft) and Blossom Baroness (played by Jen Knight) advocating for conservation and the May Queen (played by Tammy Dykstra) and Duke of Thorns (played by Dave Fournier) opposing and advocating for preservation, ending with an unexpected marriage proposal and announcement between the Prince of Leaves (Michael Barboza-McLean) and the Blueberry Princess (Melanie “Melegie” Lemony).

These events included performances by musical and theatrical groups such as The Knights of Lord Talbot , Meraki Caravan , The Phoenix Swords , The Shank Painters , The Harlot Queens , The Warlock Wondershow , The Misfits of Avalon , Diva Di , Dead Gods are the New Gods, The Green Sash, The Mt. Wichusett Witches , Skeleton Crew Theater , Massachusetts Historical Swordsmanship [HEMA] , The Ditrani Brothers , Nagashri Dancers , PsyBEL , Our Dance Space and numerous solo performers.

Obviously, RenFaires are at their core fantasy. They do not reflect in any consistent or credible way the historical realities of the medieval or early modern period, and even those groups and projects that are purportedly more focused and committed to historical accuracy, such as the Society for Creative Anachronism [SCA] and Pennsic Wars , acknowledge the deep limitations of attempting to recreate a historical past in the present: it’s simply not possible.

Although folk certainly do not (and cannot despite best efforts) actually travel back in time when attending a RenFaire, and many of the performance groups embed non-historical or fantastic elements, the desire to experience something historically adjacent, something medievalish, to invoke modern perceptions (and at times misconceptions) of premodern times, and to be immersed in a world of medievalism, has bloomed in recent years and will likely continue to grow. As a medievalist interested in the intersection between medieval studies and medievalism, my goal in cocreating and directing these RenFaires was never to recreate the historical past or attempt to conjure the authentic premodern world, but rather to evoke the experience and aesthetic of wonder that imbues so many of the works of medieval literature I love most and which dramatize the monstrous, the magical, the mysterious, miraculous and the uncanny. I asked myself and the Muses two essential questions: 1.) what would it be like to walk into a work of medieval literature? And, 2.) what would it be like to walk into a medievalesque fantasy world?

I knew I wanted the experience to be highly immersive. I wanted folks attending to feel part of something—to have almost crossed into a fairyworld or an uncanny realm. I wanted the experience to be overwhelming, with too much to possibly see or do. I wanted to create the illusion of entering a world that is alive with everything from town gossip to its own historiography and mythography. Most of all, I wanted the patrons to experience the wonder that is embedded throughout medieval literature and that makes medievalism such a joy to modern audiences. I decided to include both stage performances and many immersive skits, as well as multiple interlacing subplots that come together at various points throughout the events.

In the end, both faires were a wicked good time and proved to be huge successes—for the town and for the farm—and from these experiences a community formed into a sort of immersive theater company, FaeGuild Wonders . Because of our unique approach to these Renaissance Faires, the immersive and theatrical dramatizations in particular, and the inclusive spirit of community present at these events, we received some local press leading up to and after their debuts . But the best part of the entire process for me, personally, was not even seeing my vision come to life—it was the community building and getting to collaborate with my friends and family.

I could talk about each event in detail, exploring the ways I engage the medieval aesthetic of wonder as well as the modern imaginary, but those will likely be the substance of future blogs on Wyndonshire and Enchanted Orchard. Most exciting of all for me to share is a brand-new event that Rajuli and I are planning and directing this winter, again in collaboration with the Red Apple Farm team led by the Roses (because they were such awesome partners): the Northfolk Nightmarket on February 22 nd and 23 rd 2025. This will offer me the incredible opportunity to dramatize the story of Beowulf , the subject of my dissertation and the majority of my scholarship, and interweave the story into an inaugural event which will draw inspiration directly from medieval lore, literature, myth and legend. Perhaps we’ll see you there? Richard Fahey, PhD in English Medieval Institute University of Notre Dame

Old Directions in Medieval Language Acquisition

When more than a dozen undergraduates successfully banded together last year to petition the administration for me to teach the first ever course in Old Norse language and literature at my (now former) institution, I vowed not to disappoint them. [1] Knowing that these students would likely never have another opportunity to spend a semester learning and reading Norse in a formal setting, I soon realized that in two one-hour meetings per week over a single semester we could hope for little more than a forced march through any standard textbook, yielding some sense of the rules of the language but no real experience reading it.

Broadening my search, I came across Guðbrandur Vigfusson’s 1879 Icelandic Prose Reader . Vigfusson recommends jumping right into reading, ideally beginning by muddling through the Gospel of Matthew, with which he assumes students will be familiar, before moving on to a shorter saga—he recommends Eirik the Red. He offers this advice:

The beginner should at first trouble himself as little as possible with grammatical details, but try the while to get hold of the chief particles, the pronouns, and a few important nouns and verbs—the staple words of the language…The inflexive forms are of less import; they will be more easily learnt and better remembered, if they are allowed to grow bit by bit on the mind, as they occur in the reading. Grammar is, after all, but the means to an end, and much of one’s freshness and power of appreciation is lost, if it is incessantly diverted from the subject before one, to the ungrateful study of dry forms. [2]

Though the reader does come equipped with a brief grammar consisting primarily of tables and charts, Vigfusson underscores his grammar-deemphasized, reading-first method by featuring the texts first in the volume, grammar second .

Though Vigfusson gave very little concrete advice for teaching besides a general idea to dump students in and let them swim, it got me thinking about how else we might teach and learn old north germanic languages. How did medieval students and teachers approach language learning?

The Anglo-Saxons (despite or perhaps due to King Alfred’s lamentations about the state of Latin learning in his realm) were particularly accomplished language learners, as anyone considered truly literate had to read and write a completely foreign language—Latin. This literacy included many skills besides grammatical analysis. To quote R.W. Chambers, “their aim was to read Latin, write Latin, and dispute in Latin.” [3] Recalling ⁠ Vigfusson’s suggestion to start with the Gospel of Matthew, the youngest students of written Latin would begin with the Psalms, which they had previously learned by heart, along with the letters of the alphabet and various Latin prayers. [4] The upshot is, medieval students had a lot of the target language in their ears and memorized by heart before they ever began a program of study directly aimed at mastering grammar, learning to read, and creating in the language.

Then they’d move on to the Latin colloquy, question-and-answer dialogues meant to be memorized, acted out, and expanded through creative variation. One of the best-known colloquies, written for young scholars by prolific homilist and grammarian Ælfric of Eynsham at the turn into the eleventh century, was paired close to the time of Ælfric himself with an interlinear Old English gloss. I’d like to suggest a way of using this text in class in a way that goes beyond reading or translating the Old English (or the Latin, for that matter). [5]

The early part of the colloquy is set up as a question-and-answer between the teacher and a classfull of students, who take the parts of people working diverse jobs, a ploughman, a monk, a hunter, a cook, etc.

Here the teacher (perhaps played by one of the students) introduces us to the ploughman.

Hwæt sæᵹest þu, yrþlinᵹc? Hu beᵹæst þu weorc þin?

Eala, leof hlaford, þearle ic deorfe. Ic ᵹa ut on dæᵹræd þywende oxon to felda, and iuᵹie hiᵹ to syl; nys hit swa stearc winter þæt ic durre lutian æt ham for eᵹe hlafordes mines, ac ᵹeiukodan oxan, and ᵹefæstnodon sceare and cultre mit þære syl, ælce dæᵹ ic sceal erian fulne æcer oþþe mare.

A passage like this gives ample opportunity for working in the target language even beyond memorizing and acting out the dialogue (both excellent for building vocabulary and familiarity with grammatical structures). It also allows for imitation and creative response to a series of questions based on the text.

One question is already built into the dialogue.

Eala yrþlinᵹc, hu beᵹæst þu weorc þin?

• Ic ᵹa ut on dæᵹræd þywende oxon to felda, and iuᵹie hiᵹ to syl.

But we can ask other questions that test comprehension and encourage active imitation.

For example:

Hwæt þēoweþ sē yrþlinᵹc ut to felda?

• Sē yrþlinᵹc þēoweþ to felda þæs oxon .

Even without knowing exactly how to conjugate the verb, the student gets to employ the correct form in context through recognition and imitation. I say “þēoweþ,” and the student recognizes it as the form needed in the response.

I can drill conjugation, though, if I want:

Eala yrþlinᵹc, hwæt þēowst þu to felda? (Exaggeratedly pointing a finger at the student to emphasize the second person singular pronoun)

• Ic þēowe þæs oxon.

The student will quickly begin to recognize that “þēowst þu” needs “ic þēowe” as a response. If a student says “ic þēowst” or similar, I might repeat back “ þu þēow st , ic þēow e ” (with approriate finger pointing) and move right along.

We can work with different verbs:

Eala yrþlinᵹc, hwæt iugast þu to syl?

• Ic iugie þæs oxonto syl.

And play with conjugation:

Hwæt iugiaþ sē yrþlinᵹc to syl?

• Sē yrþlinᵹc iugiaþ þæs oxon to syl.

But there are plenty of other questions we could ask about the same bit of dialogue.

Eala yrþlinᵹc, hwaenne gæst þu ut to felda?

• Ic gā on dæᵹræd to felda.

Hwon gæþ sē yrþlinᵹc ut to felda?

• Sē yrþlinᵹc gæþ ut to felda for eᵹe his hlafordes .

Students might start out with one- or two-word responses. “Yea.” “Oxon.” “On dægræd.” But with encouragement and practice with mirroring back much of the content of the question, they will start to put together more complex utterances.

I might ask:

Hwæþer sē yrþlinᵹc gæþ ut to felda nihtes?

• Se yrþlinᵹc ne gæþ ut to felda nihtes. Sē yrþlinᵹc gæþ ut to felda on dæᵹræd .

Hwæþer sē yrþlinᵹc willaþ gan ut to felda?

• Se yrþlinᵹc ne willaþ gan ut to felda. Sē yrþlinᵹc gæð ut to felda for eᵹe his hlafordes.

These examples give some idea of the approach I’ve used, alongside extensive reading of accessible texts, to great result in my Old Norse and Latin classes. The method can be applied to other readings, even if you spend most of the class translating. Pull out a few sentences you’d like to drill down into and ask questions about in the target language.

As a postscript, we did read the gospel of Matthew and the saga of Eirik the Red, and my former students have kept up a Norse reading group, without further help or interference from me.

Rebecca M. West, Ph.D. The Center for Thomas More Studies Hillsdale College

[1] An earlier version of this material was presented at ICMS 2024.

[2] Vigfusson, An Icelandic Prose Reader , vi.

[3] R. W. Chambers, Thomas More , 58.

[4] See Garmonsway, Ælfric’s Colloquy, 12.

[5] I took inspiration from the Latin colloquy in developing new materials for my Old Norse class, but the teacher of Old English is saved this laborious step.