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Papers by Simon Meecham-Jones
Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks, 2006
Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2000
Just as the title ‘the Middle Ages’ was invented by later generations to mark out a perceived dis... more Just as the title ‘the Middle Ages’ was invented by later generations to mark out a perceived distance from past consciousness, so critics have tended to accept that certain modes of expression and certain modes of thought could not have been present in literature before the development of ‘modern’ conceptions of the unique value of human personality. Yet, even if it must be accepted that (surviving) medieval conceptions of authorship provide little or no encouragement for writers to present accounts of their own experience as being of intrinsic value, it would be surprising if a mode so central to oral literature had ever disappeared, or been banished, from the stylistic models of written culture. Nor is it possible to reconcile Foucault’s confident assertion that The idea that from one’s own life one can make a work of art is an idea which was undoubtedly foreign to the Middle Ages and which reappears at the moment of the Renaissance1 with the creation of texts as intent on the exemplary value of lived experience as Abelard’s Historia Calamitatum, The Boke of Margery Kempe or Mandeville’s Travels.
Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks, 2006
The recognition by twelfth-century rulers of the seminal role of literature in the consolidation ... more The recognition by twelfth-century rulers of the seminal role of literature in the consolidation and self-mythologizing of royal authority—understood at the court of Henry II as it was in the circles around Frederick Barbarossa—was to find curious echoes in the parallel processes of textual colonization and the exercise of self-construction and projection that characterize the work of the most original and accomplished poet of the age, Walter of Châtillon. Indeed, the two strands of Walter’s literary career—as the creator of an epic detailing the career of a warrior whose appetite for new conquest is insatiable, and as the author of febrile and phantasmagoric satires on human corruption—could both be read, in part, as critical commentaries on the exercise of “imperial” notions of power.1 Walter’s writing can be read as formulating an act of textual resistance to the apparently relentless exercise of worldly and ecclesiastical prerogative authority.
Boundaries in Medieval Romance, Feb 21, 2008
The Chaucer Review
... alternatively,to make fun of a tradition of imputing "barbarity" to the Wel... more ... alternatively,to make fun of a tradition of imputing "barbarity" to the Welsh, which had long flourished in theworks of Bede, William of Malmesbury, John of Salisbury, and others.29 The wildness of the locale of Morpheus s cave ... cal exemplars of his art?Orpheus, Chiron, and Arion ...
Multilingual Practices in Language History, 2017
Betraying Our Selves, 2000
Just as the title ‘the Middle Ages’ was invented by later generations to mark out a perceived dis... more Just as the title ‘the Middle Ages’ was invented by later generations to mark out a perceived distance from past consciousness, so critics have tended to accept that certain modes of expression and certain modes of thought could not have been present in literature before the development of ‘modern’ conceptions of the unique value of human personality. Yet, even if it must be accepted that (surviving) medieval conceptions of authorship provide little or no encouragement for writers to present accounts of their own experience as being of intrinsic value, it would be surprising if a mode so central to oral literature had ever disappeared, or been banished, from the stylistic models of written culture. Nor is it possible to reconcile Foucault’s confident assertion that The idea that from one’s own life one can make a work of art is an idea which was undoubtedly foreign to the Middle Ages and which reappears at the moment of the Renaissance1 with the creation of texts as intent on the exemplary value of lived experience as Abelard’s Historia Calamitatum, The Boke of Margery Kempe or Mandeville’s Travels.
The Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain, 2017
The recognition by twelfth-century rulers of the seminal role of literature in the consolidation ... more The recognition by twelfth-century rulers of the seminal role of literature in the consolidation and self-mythologizing of royal authority—understood at the court of Henry II as it was in the circles around Frederick Barbarossa—was to find curious echoes in the parallel processes of textual colonization and the exercise of self-construction and projection that characterize the work of the most original and accomplished poet of the age, Walter of Châtillon. Indeed, the two strands of Walter’s literary career—as the creator of an epic detailing the career of a warrior whose appetite for new conquest is insatiable, and as the author of febrile and phantasmagoric satires on human corruption—could both be read, in part, as critical commentaries on the exercise of “imperial” notions of power.1 Walter’s writing can be read as formulating an act of textual resistance to the apparently relentless exercise of worldly and ecclesiastical prerogative authority.
Code-Switching in Early English, 2011
This article aims to examine the surgical in two great treatises written down in late Middle Ages... more This article aims to examine the surgical in two great treatises written down in late Middle Ages by one of the most important European physicians: Lanfranc of Milan. A particular attention has been paid to the lexicon regarding the surgical instruments and care of diseases.
The Erotic in the Literature of Medieval Britain
Medieval Literary Responses to Warfare
... of Male Same-Sex Desire in the Fourteenth Century by Richard E. Zeikowitz Portraits of Mediev... more ... of Male Same-Sex Desire in the Fourteenth Century by Richard E. Zeikowitz Portraits of Medieval Women: Family, Marriage, and Politics ... Literature by Jeremy J. Citrome Temporal Circumstances: Form and History in the Canterbury Tales by Lee Patterson Erotic Discourse and ...
English Studies, 2001
In the final decades of the Eighteenth century and the opening years of the Nineteenth century th... more In the final decades of the Eighteenth century and the opening years of the Nineteenth century the efforts and achievements of a (relatively) small number of antiquarians and scholars returned a wealth of medieval romances and ballads to the attention of readers. Although the social status, political sympathies and intellectual contacts of those editors can be shown to have exercised a powerful influence on the textual history of the editions through which medieval texts were made available to a wider public 1 , the personal and working relationships of the scholars involved in editing and publishing medieval romances have been rarely investigated. Uncovering such influences has proved a difficult task when, as a result of loss or deliberate suppression, records of the editorial processes are both sparse and misleading. One source so far overlooked is found in National Library of Wales manuscripts 5599 and 5600c, which bear a selection of dedicatory and marginal notes shedding a revealing, if oblique, light on the complex culture of collaboration and personal rivalry which influenced the pursuit of antiquarian studies in this period. National Library of Wales manuscripts 5599 and 5600c comprise two volumes, uniformly bound in russia, of transcriptions of eight English metrical romances written in two hands at the close of the Eighteenth Century, and bearing marginal comments and notes in an additional three hands. The first contains transcriptions of La Mort Arthur (from MS Harley 2252), Sir Tryamour (from a Copland print from Garrick's collection), Sir Eglamoure of Artois (from a print by Walley) and Ipomydon (from MS Harley 2252). The second volume contains transcripts of Ywaine and Gawaine (from MS Cotton Galba E ix), The Squyr of Lowe Degre (from a Copland print), Launfal Miles (from MS Cotton Caligula A ii) and Kyng Horn (from MS Harley 2253). The paper of the two volumes displays a selection of five watermarks, bearing (variously) the dates 1798 and 1799, a shield device, the initials GR and E&P and (in the second volume) the words EDMEADS & PINE, which identifies the paper as having been made at the Ivy Mill papermill in Kent. 2 127
A Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth, 2020
Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks, 2006
Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2000
Just as the title ‘the Middle Ages’ was invented by later generations to mark out a perceived dis... more Just as the title ‘the Middle Ages’ was invented by later generations to mark out a perceived distance from past consciousness, so critics have tended to accept that certain modes of expression and certain modes of thought could not have been present in literature before the development of ‘modern’ conceptions of the unique value of human personality. Yet, even if it must be accepted that (surviving) medieval conceptions of authorship provide little or no encouragement for writers to present accounts of their own experience as being of intrinsic value, it would be surprising if a mode so central to oral literature had ever disappeared, or been banished, from the stylistic models of written culture. Nor is it possible to reconcile Foucault’s confident assertion that The idea that from one’s own life one can make a work of art is an idea which was undoubtedly foreign to the Middle Ages and which reappears at the moment of the Renaissance1 with the creation of texts as intent on the exemplary value of lived experience as Abelard’s Historia Calamitatum, The Boke of Margery Kempe or Mandeville’s Travels.
Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks, 2006
The recognition by twelfth-century rulers of the seminal role of literature in the consolidation ... more The recognition by twelfth-century rulers of the seminal role of literature in the consolidation and self-mythologizing of royal authority—understood at the court of Henry II as it was in the circles around Frederick Barbarossa—was to find curious echoes in the parallel processes of textual colonization and the exercise of self-construction and projection that characterize the work of the most original and accomplished poet of the age, Walter of Châtillon. Indeed, the two strands of Walter’s literary career—as the creator of an epic detailing the career of a warrior whose appetite for new conquest is insatiable, and as the author of febrile and phantasmagoric satires on human corruption—could both be read, in part, as critical commentaries on the exercise of “imperial” notions of power.1 Walter’s writing can be read as formulating an act of textual resistance to the apparently relentless exercise of worldly and ecclesiastical prerogative authority.
Boundaries in Medieval Romance, Feb 21, 2008
The Chaucer Review
... alternatively,to make fun of a tradition of imputing "barbarity" to the Wel... more ... alternatively,to make fun of a tradition of imputing "barbarity" to the Welsh, which had long flourished in theworks of Bede, William of Malmesbury, John of Salisbury, and others.29 The wildness of the locale of Morpheus s cave ... cal exemplars of his art?Orpheus, Chiron, and Arion ...
Multilingual Practices in Language History, 2017
Betraying Our Selves, 2000
Just as the title ‘the Middle Ages’ was invented by later generations to mark out a perceived dis... more Just as the title ‘the Middle Ages’ was invented by later generations to mark out a perceived distance from past consciousness, so critics have tended to accept that certain modes of expression and certain modes of thought could not have been present in literature before the development of ‘modern’ conceptions of the unique value of human personality. Yet, even if it must be accepted that (surviving) medieval conceptions of authorship provide little or no encouragement for writers to present accounts of their own experience as being of intrinsic value, it would be surprising if a mode so central to oral literature had ever disappeared, or been banished, from the stylistic models of written culture. Nor is it possible to reconcile Foucault’s confident assertion that The idea that from one’s own life one can make a work of art is an idea which was undoubtedly foreign to the Middle Ages and which reappears at the moment of the Renaissance1 with the creation of texts as intent on the exemplary value of lived experience as Abelard’s Historia Calamitatum, The Boke of Margery Kempe or Mandeville’s Travels.
The Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain, 2017
The recognition by twelfth-century rulers of the seminal role of literature in the consolidation ... more The recognition by twelfth-century rulers of the seminal role of literature in the consolidation and self-mythologizing of royal authority—understood at the court of Henry II as it was in the circles around Frederick Barbarossa—was to find curious echoes in the parallel processes of textual colonization and the exercise of self-construction and projection that characterize the work of the most original and accomplished poet of the age, Walter of Châtillon. Indeed, the two strands of Walter’s literary career—as the creator of an epic detailing the career of a warrior whose appetite for new conquest is insatiable, and as the author of febrile and phantasmagoric satires on human corruption—could both be read, in part, as critical commentaries on the exercise of “imperial” notions of power.1 Walter’s writing can be read as formulating an act of textual resistance to the apparently relentless exercise of worldly and ecclesiastical prerogative authority.
Code-Switching in Early English, 2011
This article aims to examine the surgical in two great treatises written down in late Middle Ages... more This article aims to examine the surgical in two great treatises written down in late Middle Ages by one of the most important European physicians: Lanfranc of Milan. A particular attention has been paid to the lexicon regarding the surgical instruments and care of diseases.
The Erotic in the Literature of Medieval Britain
Medieval Literary Responses to Warfare
... of Male Same-Sex Desire in the Fourteenth Century by Richard E. Zeikowitz Portraits of Mediev... more ... of Male Same-Sex Desire in the Fourteenth Century by Richard E. Zeikowitz Portraits of Medieval Women: Family, Marriage, and Politics ... Literature by Jeremy J. Citrome Temporal Circumstances: Form and History in the Canterbury Tales by Lee Patterson Erotic Discourse and ...
English Studies, 2001
In the final decades of the Eighteenth century and the opening years of the Nineteenth century th... more In the final decades of the Eighteenth century and the opening years of the Nineteenth century the efforts and achievements of a (relatively) small number of antiquarians and scholars returned a wealth of medieval romances and ballads to the attention of readers. Although the social status, political sympathies and intellectual contacts of those editors can be shown to have exercised a powerful influence on the textual history of the editions through which medieval texts were made available to a wider public 1 , the personal and working relationships of the scholars involved in editing and publishing medieval romances have been rarely investigated. Uncovering such influences has proved a difficult task when, as a result of loss or deliberate suppression, records of the editorial processes are both sparse and misleading. One source so far overlooked is found in National Library of Wales manuscripts 5599 and 5600c, which bear a selection of dedicatory and marginal notes shedding a revealing, if oblique, light on the complex culture of collaboration and personal rivalry which influenced the pursuit of antiquarian studies in this period. National Library of Wales manuscripts 5599 and 5600c comprise two volumes, uniformly bound in russia, of transcriptions of eight English metrical romances written in two hands at the close of the Eighteenth Century, and bearing marginal comments and notes in an additional three hands. The first contains transcriptions of La Mort Arthur (from MS Harley 2252), Sir Tryamour (from a Copland print from Garrick's collection), Sir Eglamoure of Artois (from a print by Walley) and Ipomydon (from MS Harley 2252). The second volume contains transcripts of Ywaine and Gawaine (from MS Cotton Galba E ix), The Squyr of Lowe Degre (from a Copland print), Launfal Miles (from MS Cotton Caligula A ii) and Kyng Horn (from MS Harley 2253). The paper of the two volumes displays a selection of five watermarks, bearing (variously) the dates 1798 and 1799, a shield device, the initials GR and E&P and (in the second volume) the words EDMEADS & PINE, which identifies the paper as having been made at the Ivy Mill papermill in Kent. 2 127
A Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth, 2020