Rewriting the Self


Book Description

A lively and controversial exploration of ideas of the self in the western cultural tradition from the Renaissance to the present. Highly esteemed contributors analyse differing models of personal identity from a variety of perspectives.




The Annotated Book in the Early Middle Ages


Book Description

Annotations in modern books are a phenomenon that often causes disapproval: we are not supposed to draw, doodle, underline, or highlight in our books. In many medieval manuscripts, however, the pages are filled with annotations around the text and in-between the lines. In some cases, a 'white space' around the text is even laid out to contain extra text, pricked and ruled for the purpose. Just as footnotes are an approved and standard part of the modern academic book, so the flyleaves, margins, and interlinear spaces of many medieval manuscripts are an invitation to add extra text. This volume focuses on annotation in the early medieval period. In treating manuscripts as mirrors of the medieval minds who created them - reflecting their interests, their choices, their practices - the essays explore a number of key topics. Are there certain genres in which the making of annotations seems to be more appropriate or common than in others? Are there genres in which annotating is 'not done'? Are there certain monastic centres in which annotating practices flourish, and from which they spread? The volume thus investigates whether early medieval annotators used specific techniques, perhaps identifiable with their scribal communities or schools. It explores what annotators actually sought to accomplish with their annotations, and how the techniques of annotating developed over time and per region.




Lettering the Self in Medieval and Early Modern France


Book Description

Each chapter focuses on a particular epistolary exchange in its intellectual and cultural context, from Baudri of Bourgueil and Constance of Angers, through Heloise and Abelard, Christine de Pizan's participation in the querelle du Roman de la rose, Marguerite de Navarre and Guillaume Briconnet, to Michel de Montaigne and Etienne de la Boetie, emphasizing the importance of letter writing in pre-modern French culture and tracing a selective yet significant history of the letter, contributing to our understanding of the development of the epistolary genre, and the pre-modern self --Book Jacket.




Rewriting the Self


Book Description

Originally published in 1993. This book explores the process by which individuals reconstruct the meaning and significance of past experience. Drawing on the lives of such notable figures as St Augustine, Helen Keller and Philip Roth as well as on the combined insights of psychology, philosophy and literary theory, the book sheds light on the intricacies and dilemmas of self-interpretation in particular and interpretive psychological enquiry more generally. The author draws upon selected, mainly autobiographical, literary texts in order to examine concretely the process of rewriting the self. Among the issues addressed are the relationship of rewriting the self to the concept of development, the place of language in the construction of selfhood, the difference between living and telling about it, the problem of facts in life history narrative, the significance of the unconscious in interpreting the personal past, and the freedom of the narrative imagination. Alpha Sigma Nu National Book Award winner in 1994




Rewriting Magic


Book Description

In Rewriting Magic, Claire Fanger explores a fourteenth-century text called The Flowers of Heavenly Teaching. Written by a Benedictine monk named John of Morigny, the work all but disappeared from the historical record, and it is only now coming to light again in multiple versions and copies. While John’s book largely comprises an extended set of prayers for gaining knowledge, The Flowers of Heavenly Teaching is unusual among prayer books of its time because it includes a visionary autobiography with intimate information about the book’s inspiration and composition. Through the window of this record, we witness how John reconstructs and reconsecrates a condemned liturgy for knowledge acquisition: the ars notoria of Solomon. John’s work was the subject of intense criticism and public scandal, and his book was burned as heretical in 1323. The trauma of these experiences left its imprint on the book, but in unexpected and sometimes baffling ways. Fanger decodes this imprint even as she relays the narrative of how she learned to understand it. In engaging prose, she explores the twin processes of knowledge acquisition in John’s visionary autobiography and her own work of discovery as she reconstructed the background to his extraordinary book. Fanger’s approach to her subject exemplifies innovative historical inquiry, research, and methodology. Part theology, part historical anthropology, part biblio-memoir, Rewriting Magic relates a story that will have deep implications for the study of medieval life, monasticism, prayer, magic, and religion.




The History and Anatomy of Auctorial Self-criticism in the European Middle Ages


Book Description

This study outlines the history and anatomy of the European apology tradition from the sixth century BCE to 1500 for the first time. The study examines the vernacular and Latin tales, lyrics, epics, and prose compositions of Arabic, English, French, German, Greek, Icelandic, Italian, Spanish, and Welsh authors. Three different strands of the apology tradition can be proposed. The first and most pervasive strand features apologies to pagan deities and-later-to God. The second most important strand contains literary apologies made to an earthly audience, usually of women. A third strand occurs more rarely and contains apologies for varying literary offenses that are directed to a more general audience. The medieval theory of language privileges an imitation of the Christian master narrative and a hierarchical medieval view of authorship. These notions express a medieval philosophical concern about language and its role, and therefore the role of the author, in cosmic history. Despite the fact that women apologize for different purposes and reasons, their examples illustrate, on yet another level, the antifeminist subtext inherent in the entire apology tradition. Overall, the apology tradition characterized by interauctoriality, intertextuality, and intratextuality, enables self-critical authors to refer not only backward but also-primarily-forward, making the medieval apology a progressive strategy that engenders new literature. This study would be relevant to all medievalists, especially those interested in literature and the history of ideas.




Rewriting Medieval French Literature


Book Description

Jane H. M. Taylor is one of the world's foremost scholars of rewriting or réécriture. Her focus has been on literature in medieval and Renaissance France, but rewriting, including continuation, translation, and adaptation, lies at the heart of literary traditions in all vernaculars. This book explores both the interdisciplinarity of rewriting and Taylor's remarkable contribution to its study. The rewriting and reinterpretation of narratives across chronological, social and/or linguistic boundaries represents not only a crucial feature of text transmission, but also a locus of cultural exchange. Taylor has shown that the adaptation of material to conform to the expectations, values, or literary tastes of a different audience can reveal important information regarding the acculturation and reception of medieval texts. In recent years, numerous scholars across disciplines have thus turned to this field of enquiry. This collection of studies dedicated to the rewriting of medieval French literature from the twelfth to the twenty-first centuries by Taylor’s friends, colleagues, and former students offers not only a fitting tribute to Taylor’s career, but also a timely consolidation of the very latest research in the field, which will be vital for all scholars of medieval rewriting. With contributions from Jessica Taylor, Keith Busby, Leah Tether, Logan E. Whalen, Mireille Séguy, Christine Ferlampin-Acher, Ad Putter, Anne Salamon, Patrick Moran, Nathalie Koble, Bart Besamusca, Frank Brandsma, Richard Trachsler, Carol J. Chase, Maria Colombo Timelli, Laura Chuhan Campbell, Joan Tasker-Grimbert, Jean-Claude Mühlethaler, Michelle Szkilnik, Thomas Hinton, Elizabeth Archibald.




Fictions of Identity in Medieval France


Book Description

In this study of vernacular French narrative from the twelfth century through the later Middle Ages, Maddox considers the construction of identity in a range of fictions. He focuses on crucial encounters, widespread in medieval literature, in which characters are informed about fundamental aspects of their own circumstances and selfhood.




Imagining the Self, Constructing the Past


Book Description

Imagining the Self, Constructing the Past celebrates the various ways in which the Middle Ages and the Renaissance are adapted, recollected, and represented in our own day and age. Most of the chapters fit broadly into one of three categories: namely, the representation of the self in medieval and early modern history and literature; the recollection and utilization of the past in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance; and the role of the medieval and the early modern in our own society. Overall, the contributions to this volume bear witness to the importance of representation to our understanding of ourselves, each other, and our shared past.