Measures in Medieval English recipes – culinary vs. medical

The present paper deals with an analysis of medieval culinary and medical recipes. A major feature which will be of interest is the use of measure terms. The research has been based on material from 14th and 15th century recipe collections. First, the major weight and measure systems which were used in the Middle English period will be presented. Then, the measure terms used in the analysed texts are collected and categorised into three groups: specific, non-specific, and container-related terms. The study, apart from showing the variety of measure terms used at the time, also compares two types of recipes, i.e., medical and culinary.Project financed by the National Science Centre, decision number DEC-2013/11/B/HS2/02504

Representations of Women in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Man of Law’s Tale” and “Tale of Melibee”

This thesis project discusses stereotypical representations of women as it explores Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Understanding the Middle Ages and its treatment of women in society and art, the first section explores the idea of clergy and aristocracy as dominant groups responsible for the creation of the feminine ideal and their subsequent subordination even as it presents paradoxical imagery (ex: Eve and Mary). Following chapters are devoted to female protagonists and highlight their representation as empowered in spite of societal constraints. Through a close reading of the text, the project specifically focuses on Custance, the protagonist from “The Man of Law\u27s Tale,” and Prudence, from “The Tale of Melibee.” Although Custance and Prudence adhere to medieval cultural ideals of femininity, it further notes their central position in the narratives discussed, and presents an argument for the active and heroic nature of these women in Chaucer’s poetic tales. The project concludes that Chaucer’s female characters subvert traditional imagery, transcend stereotypical representations, and create an image of medieval women as independent subjects. (Artwork from the time period is included throughout the project as part of the discussion of gendered representation.

The Anti-Crusade Voice of Chaucer\u27s Canterbury Tales

This study reads some Middle English poetry in terms of crusading, and it argues that the most prominent English poets, namely Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, and John Gower, were against the later crusades regardless of their target. However, since the anti-crusade voice of Gower and Langland has been discussed by many other scholars, this study focuses on Chaucer\u27s poems and their implicit opposition of crusading. I argue that despite Chaucer\u27s apparent neutrality to crusading as well as other sociopolitical and cultural matters of England, his poetry can hardly be read but as an indirect critique of war in general and crusading in particular. Thus, to prove such a claim, this study consists of five main chapters. The first chapter discusses the dominance as well as nature of crusading in fourteenth-century England. The second chapter reads Gower\u27s Confessio Amantis and Langland\u27s Piers Plowman as anti-crusade poems. The third chapter reads Chaucer\u27s poems written before the Canterbury Tales as a critique of crusading. The fourth chapter argues that one of the central themes of the Canterbury Tales is to indirectly denounce crusading and mock crusaders. The fifth chapter revisits Chaucer\u27s bibliography and uses it to explain why his critique of crusading is indirect. Finally, this study concludes that Chaucer is an anti-crusade poet, but his heavy reliance on the English court as a main source of power, prestige, and income explains the main reason of his indirect opposition of crusading

Early English Debate Poetry as Conflict Talk

This study examines conflict-related features in a corpus of English debate poems from ca. 1250–1650. The dataset includes 30 central texts of varying lengths from the medieval and early modern periods. The theoretical framework is that of historical discourse linguistics and dialogue analysis, with input from studies of present-day speech-in-interaction. Earlier research on this genre has been largely literary, and the present work provides new insights both into the types of moves found within the conflict sequence and the actual linguistic building blocks used to represent conflict interaction. The approach is mainly based on close reading, but qualitative methods are complemented with a quantitative analysis of frequently appearing linguistic items such as modals and negatives. The study begins with a survey of the earlier tradition of academic and literary debates, and a review of how conflict talk has been conceptualized in previous research. Most of the conflictive moves established in earlier research on modern English were also found in debate poetry. This study identified two additional moves: predictions and formulations used for aggressive purposes. In terms of self-oriented moves, self-praise seems to be common in my material, and the methods of backing a claim are quite varied. The beginning phase of the conflict sequence was found to have a localised asymmetry which replicates that found in present-day conflicts: the attacking party has an initial advantage. As for the ending sequences, it emerged that a successful submission apparently required a full admission of error and a commitment not to repeat it. Other ways of negotiating a termination of conflict included mentioning time constraints and requesting a ruling from an arbitrator. The quantitative analysis also shows strategies that would tend to highlight the conflict element: the opponent’s statements are made to seem more extreme, and the speaker’s own arguments are represented as the only available option. The analysis also foregrounds the notion of evidentiality and the centrality of negotiating what constitutes acceptable proof. This is the first study to explore both medieval and early modern debate poetry in detail. The findings support those of earlier literary criticism, while shedding light on the linguistic aspect and thereby enhancing our understanding of how conflict was viewed and represented at the time. Some findings have relevance for today: the conflictive use of formulations and predictions may well be present also in everyday conflicts, even if it is less salient there.Tutkimukseni käsittelee konfliktipuheeseen liittyviä piirteitä keskiajan ja uuden ajan alun englantilaisessa kiistarunoudessa. Aineisto käsittää 30 keskeistä tekstiä.Teoreettiselta viitekehykseltään työ kuuluu historiallisen diskurssilingvistiikan ja dialogianalyysin alaan; vaikutteita on otettu myös vuorovaikutuslingvistiikan tutkimuksesta. Kiistarunouteen perehtynyt aiempi tutkimus on ollut pitkälti kirjallisuustieteellistä, ja näin ollen työni tarjoaa uusia oivalluksia niin konfliktin aikana tehtävistä toiminnoista eli ’siirroista’ kuin myös yhteenoton kirjallisessa esittämisessä hyödynnettävistä konkreettisista kielellisistä ilmiöistä. Lähestymistapani perustuu pääasiassa lähilukuun, mutta täydennän laadullisia menetelmiä usein esiintyvien kielellisten piirteiden kvantitatiivisella analyysilla (esim. modaaliverbit ja kieltosanat). Kiistarunoudessa esiintyvät lähes kaikki nykykieleen liittyvässä aiemmassa tutkimuksessa tunnistetut siirrot. Tutkimukseni lisää näihin kaksi uutta siirtoa: ennusteet ja aggressiivisiin tarkoituksiin käytettävät formulaatiot. Myös omakehu on aineistossani varsin yleistä, ja väitteitä voidaan tukea hyvin monenlaisiin auktoriteetteihin viitaten. Kiistarunon alussa hyökkäävä osapuoli on etulyöntiasemassa, eli syntyy paikallinen voimaepätasapaino, mikä on yleistä myös nykypäivän konflikteissa. Konflikti voidaan päättää joko antautumalla, mikä vaatii oman erehdyksen tunnustamista ja lupauksen olla toistamatta samaa virhettä jatkossa, tai pyytämällä etukäteen sovittua tuomaria julistamaan tulos. Keskustelu voidaan päättää myös käytettävissä olevan ajan rajallisuuteen viittaamalla. Myös määrällisessä analyysissa korostuivat konfliktia kärjistävät strategiat. Vastustajan argumentteja liioitellaan, ja puhujan omat näkemykset esitetään ainoina mahdollisina, muut vaihtoehdot häivyttäen. Evidentiaalisuus ja keskustelijoiden neuvottelut siitä, mitkä todistelut voidaan katsoa hyväksyttäviksi, nousevat tässä keskeiseen asemaan. Löydökseni tukevat aiempia kirjallisuustieteen tuloksia, mutta nostavat esille kielellisiä ilmiöitä ja lisäävät näin ymmärrystämme konfliktiin liittyneistä käsityksistä ja sen kirjallisesta esittämisestä. Joillakin tuloksilla on merkitystä myös nykyään: aggressiivisia formulaatioita ja ennusteita esiintyy todennäköisesti myös nykyajan ristiriitatilanteissa

'Les cent nouvelles nouvelles': A linguistic study of MS Glasgow Hunter 252

MS Glasgow Hunter 252 is the sole surviving manuscript copy of the 'Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles'. The present PhD thesis, funded by a Glasgow University Scholarship and supervised by James Simpson and Peter Davies, explores the language of this collection of bawdy tales, attributed to the court of Philippe III de Bourgogne (1396-1467). Most existing studies on the language of the 'Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles' have offered a literary (e.g. stylistic, narratological) perspective, and very few have considered the document within the wider context of French historical linguistics. The present thesis aims to fill this gap by: •Presenting elements of linguistic interest within the document (dialectalisms, archaisms, rare features, cultural references, etc.), through a comprehensive survey of phonology, morphology, syntax and vocabulary. •Expanding and reassessing existing theories on orthographic standardisation and dialectal input in written and, more speculatively, spoken Middle French. •Providing scriptological evidence towards the localisation of other textual resources within the online 'Dictionnaire du moyen français (1330-1500)'. •Investigating the authenticity of the mise-en-scène of the 'Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles'; reflecting on linguistic practices and note-taking at the Court of Burgundy. •Exploring spoken language as rendered by direct speech passages, with special consideration of linguistic variation and stereotyping. •Publishing textual databases for future analysis (tables of main spelling variants, alphabetical list of words, etc.)

Dark Chaucer: An Assortment

Although widely beloved for its playfulness and comic sensibility, Chaucer’s poetry is also subtly shot through with dark moments that open into obscure and irresolvably haunting vistas, passages into which one might fall head-first and never reach the abyssal bottom, scenes and events where everything could possibly go horribly wrong or where everything that matters seems, if even momentarily, altogether and irretrievably lost. And then sometimes, things really do go wrong. Opting to dilate rather than cordon off this darkness, this volume assembles a variety of attempts to follow such moments into their folds of blackness and horror, to chart their endless sorrows and recursive gloom, and to take depth soundings in the darker recesses of the Chaucerian lakes in order to bring back palm- or bite-sized pieces (black jewels) of bitter Chaucer that could be shared with others . . . an “assortment,” if you will. You never know what you will find in the dark. Contents: Candace Barrington, “Dark Whiteness: Benjamin Brawley and Chaucer” – Brantley L. Bryant & Alia, “Saturn’s Darkness” – Ruth Evans, “A Dark Stain and a Non-Encounter” – Gaelan Gilbert, “Chaucerian Afterlives: Reception and Eschatology” – Leigh Harrison, “Black Gold: The Former (and Future) Age” – Nicola Masciandaro, “Half Dead: Parsing Cecelia” – J. Allan Mitchell, “In the Event of the Franklin’s Tale” – Travis Neel & Andrew Richmond, “Black as the Crow” – Hannah Priest, “Unravelling Constance” – Lisa Schamess, “L’O de V: A Palimpsest” – Myra Seaman, “Disconsolate Art” – Karl Steel, “Kill Me, Save Me, Let Me Go: Custance, Virginia, Emelye” – Elaine Treharne, “The Physician’s Tale as Hagioclasm” – Bob Valasek, “The Light has Lifted: Pandare Trickster” – Lisa Weston, “Suffer the Little Children, or, A Rumination on the Faith of Zombies” – Thomas White, “The Dark Is Light Enough: The Layout of the Tale of Sir Thopas.” This assortment of dark morsels also features a prose-poem Preface by Gary Shipley.

Middle Ages—Reformation—Volkskunde

Twenty essays on medieval history, literature and language published in honor of John G. Kunstmann and his work on German literature in the Middle Ages. The contributors are Berthold Ullman, Urban Tigner Holmes, Edwin Zeydel, George Fenwick Jones, Wayland Hand, Robert Linker, John Keller, Carl Bayerschmidt, Helmut Motekat, Stuart Gallacher, John Fisher, Astrik Gabriel, James Engel, Eli Sobel, Lewis Spitz, Theodore Silverstein, Murray Cowie, Marian Cowie, Josef Ryan, Oscar Jones, and Fritjof Raven

Dark Chaucer: An Assortment

Although widely beloved for its playfulness and comic sensibility, Chaucer’s poetry is also subtly shot through with dark moments that open into obscure and irresolvably haunting vistas, passages into which one might fall head-first and never reach the abyssal bottom, scenes and events where everything could possibly go horribly wrong or where everything that matters seems, if even momentarily, altogether and irretrievably lost. And then sometimes, things really do go wrong. Opting to dilate rather than cordon off this darkness, this volume assembles a variety of attempts to follow such moments into their folds of blackness and horror, to chart their endless sorrows and recursive gloom, and to take depth soundings in the darker recesses of the Chaucerian lakes in order to bring back palm- or bite-sized pieces (black jewels) of bitter Chaucer that could be shared with others . . . an “assortment,” if you will. Not that this collection finds only emptiness and non-meaning in these caves and lakes. You never know what you will discover in the dark

Premodern Experience of the Natural World in Translation

This innovative collection showcases the importance of the relationship between translation and experience in premodern science, bringing together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to offer a nuanced understanding of knowledge transfer across premodern time and space. The volume considers experience as a tool and object of science in the premodern world, using this idea as a jumping-off point from which to view translation as a process of interaction between diff erent epistemic domains. The book is structured around four dimensions of translation—between terms within and across languages; across sciences and scientific norms; between verbal and visual systems; and through the expertise of practitioners and translators—which raise key questions on what constituted experience of the natural world in the premodern area and the impact of translation processes and agents in shaping experience. Providing a wide-ranging global account of historical studies on the travel and translation of experience in the premodern world, this book will be of interest to scholars in history, the history of translation, and the history and philosophy of science