Crossing Boundaries: Issues of Cultural and Individual Identities in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Description

The essays presented here cover a range of topics and periods and testify to the breadth and depth of “boundaries” as a concept. The concept’s origins are located in the work of ethnographers, whose most cogent representative is Fredrik Barth. In his seminal work Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, a collection of articles by Barth and others published in 1967, he shifted the scholarly discussion about ethnicity away from particular attributes that define ethnic groups to the boundaries that separate them from another. Boundaries were less significant for what they enclosed than for their very nature and purpose. The disciplines that make most use of the concept of “crossing boundaries” are the youngest, such as feminist and gender studies or, more generally, cultural studies. The first section of the collection consists of literary approaches to boundaries, ranging widely in subject matter from Norman drama to sixteenth-century goodnight ballads. In the second part, the concept of boundaries is brought to bear on the existentia1 plight of Byzantine refugees, Marian devotion in Milanese music, witch hunters’ manuals and finally strangers in Tudors England. In every case, literary texts come into play, but most of these authors seek to apply the concept of transgression and boundaries to their texts in different ways. Individually and as a group, the essays contribute fresh insights into wel1-known and some less familiar works of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Front Matter ("Contents", "Introduction"), p. C1 Free Access Boundaries in Literature Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae: Lessons in Self-Fashioning for the Bastards of Britain, p. 3 Linda Georgianna https://doi.org/10.1484/M.ASMAR-EB.4.00531 Eve and Her Audience in the Anglo-Norman Adam, p. 27 Robert L. A. Clark https://doi.org/10.1484/M.ASMAR-EB.4.00532 Seinte Cecile and Cristes owene knyghtes: Violence, Resignation, and Resistance in the Second Nun's Tale, p. 41 John Damon https://doi.org/10.1484/M.ASMAR-EB.4.00533 Linguistic Identity in the Middle Ages: The Case of the Spanish Jews, p. 57 Elaine R. Miller https://doi.org/10.1484/M.ASMAR-EB.4.00534 Medieval Documentary Poetics and Langland's Authorial Identity, p. 79 Emily Steiner https://doi.org/10.1484/M.ASMAR-EB.4.00535 Religious Rhetoric as Resistance in Early Modern Goodnight Ballads, p. 107 Patricia Marby Harrison https://doi.org/10.1484/M.ASMAR-EB.4.00536 Mary Wroth's Willow Poetics: Revising Female Desire in Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, p. 127 Jami Ake https://doi.org/10.1484/M.ASMAR-EB.4.00537 A Bridge "The human face divine": Identity and the Portrait from Locke to Chaucer, p. 155 Annabel Patterson https://doi.org/10.1484/M.ASMAR-EB.4.00538 Boundaries in History Common Language and the Common Good: Aspects of Identity among Byzantine Emigres in Renaissance Italy, p. 189 Jonathan Harris https://doi.org/10.1484/M.ASMAR-EB.4.00539 Beata et venerablilis Virgo: Music and Devotion in Renaissance Milan, p. 203 Nolan Gasser https://doi.org/10.1484/M.ASMAR-EB.4.00540 Sex, Lies, and Depositions: Pierre de Lancre's Vision of the Witches' Sabbath, p. 239 Elspeth Whitney https://doi.org/10.1484/M.ASMAR-EB.4.00541 Straungers and Aliaunts: The "Un-English" among the English in Elizabethan England, p. 263 Laura Hunt Yungblut https://doi.org/10.1484/M.ASMAR-EB.4.00542 Back Matter ("Notes on Contributors", "Index"), p. 277