Family, locality and nationality: vernacular adaptations of the Expugnatio Hibernica from late medieval Ireland

This paper examines two late medieval abridgements of Gerald of Wales’ Expugnatio Hibernica, one in Hiberno-English and one in Irish. The manuscripts in which these adaptations survive all date from the late fifteenth century and appear to bear witness to a sudden and pronounced interest in Gerald’s text. Drawing on evidence from the extant manuscripts, this paper explores the readerships of, and the nature of their interest in, these adaptations. A key conclusion is that the Expugnatio, which gives prominence to Gerald's own relatives, the Fitzgeralds, was valued as a family history by the Fitzgerald Earls of Kildare and their allies. The Earls were at the height of their power in the period in which these manuscripts were produced. Examination of this neglected evidence of the adaptation and readership of the Expugnatio in late medieval Ireland suggests that, for some medieval readers at least, the primary identities Gerald’s text expressed were familial and local rather than colonial or national.

The circulation of romances from England in late-medieval Ireland

The fifteenth century saw a striking upturn in the number of texts from foreign vernaculars that were translated into Irish. Indeed, one might go so far as to speak in terms of a ‘translation trend’ in Ireland during the mid to late fifteenth century. A notable feature of this trend is that a particularly high number of these Irish translations are of romances; contextual and textual evidence suggests that the original exemplars for many of these translated texts appear to have come from England, though not all of them were necessarily in English. Irish translations of eight romances have survived to the present day: Guy of Warwick; Bevis of Hampton; La Queste de Saint Graal; Fierabras; Caxton’s Recuyell of the Histories of Troie; William of Palerne; the Seven Sages of Rome; and Octavian. This paper addresses two aspects of these texts of particular relevance to romance scholars who do not work within the sphere of Celtic studies. Firstly, it argues that certain aspects of the dissemination and reception of romance in Ireland are quite distinctive. Manuscript and textual evidence suggests that the religious orders, particularly the Franciscans, seem to have played a role in the importation and translation of these narratives. Secondly, examination of the Irish versions of romance tends to bear out an observation made by Flower many years ago, but not pursued by subsequent scholars: ‘texts of an unusual kind were current in Ireland, and it may be that interesting discoveries are to be made here’. Certain narrative features of several of these Irish translations diverge from all the surviving versions of the relevant romance in other languages and may witness to a variant exemplar that has since been lost from its own linguistic corpus.

A história portuguesa medieval: preservação, ordenação e esquecimento

Os últimos séculos da Idade Média, nomeadamente os séculos XIII, XIV e XV, são marcados na Europa por uma crescente preocupação em fixar por escrito os diversos saberes e eventos, preocupação que, ligada às tentativas de sistematizar a organização dos reinos, contribui significativamente para a ascensão das línguas vulgares como línguas dos mais variados gêneros - de documentos jurídicos e administrativos a textos de caráter filosófico e histórico. em Portugal, o empenho em deixar registrado o passado numa língua acessível tem início no século XIV e culmina no século XV, quando se procura organizar a memória através da escrita e se começa a construir uma perspectiva portuguesa sobre o passado. O objetivo do presente texto é mapear alguns índices que revelam a importância que os portugueses dos séculos XIV e XV conferem à ordenação do passado, sobretudo a partir da escolha do que devia e do que não podia cair no esquecimento.

A corpus of Middle English medical prologues in the Sloane Collection of The British Libray: an introduction to the genre in prose

[ES] Esta tesis trata sobre los prólogos a textos ingleses de carácter médico escritos o copiados en forma de prosa durante el siglo XV. En este trabajo se han contemplado dos objetivos generales: por un lado, la creación de un corpus con todos los prólogos inéditos que cumplen con estos criterios y que se encuentran en la colección de Sloana en la British Library de Londres, según Voigts & Kurtz: Scientific an Medical Writtings in Old and Middle English: An Electronic Reference (2000); y por otro, la presentación de estod prólogos como conjunto, incluyendo: los datos recopilados sobre la codicología de los manuscritos, afiliación de los textos, sus fuentes y el dialecto utilizado. Asimismo, como parte de esta presentación, se aporta un análisis original de la estructura, forma y contenido de los materiales seleccionados para el estudio. El propósito de esta tesis es llenar un hueco en la literatura académica acerca de los prólogos a textos médicos escritos en inglés medieval tardío, tal y como lo señala Voigts (1982:54)

The Bible in Medieval Love Lyrics: A Fundamental Element of European Poetry Books

The focus of this study is the relationship among three different manuscripts (Modena, Bibl. Estense, MS α.R.4.4; Firenze, Bibl. Laurenziana MS Rediano 9; and London, BL, MS Harley, 2253) and the poetry they transmit. The aim of this research is to show the ways that the Bible was used in the transmission of the lyric poetry in the three literatures that they represent: Occitan (primarily through Marcabru’s songs), Italian (through the love poetry of Guittone d’Arezzo), and Middle English (through the Harley love lyrics and the MS.’s primary scribe), in a medieval European context.

Agat‘angełos

The Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle brings together the latest research in chronicle studies from a variety of disciplines and scholarly traditions. Chronicles are the history books written and read in educated circles throughout Europe and the Middle East in the Middle Ages. For the modern reader, they are important as sources for the history they tell, but equally they open windows on the preoccupations and self-perceptions of those who tell it. Interest in chronicles has grown steadily in recent decades, and the foundation of a Medieval Chronicle Society in 1999 is indicative of this. Indeed, in many ways the Encyclopedia has been inspired by the emergence of this Society as a focus of the interdisciplinary chronicle community. The Encyclopedia fills an important gap especially for historians, art historians and literary scholars. It is the first reference work on medieval chronicles to attempt this kind of coverage of works from Europe, North Africa and the Middle East over a period of twelve centuries. 2564 entries and 65 illustrations describe individual anonymous chronicles or the historical oeuvre of particular chroniclers, covering the widest possible selection of works written in Latin, English, French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Norse, Irish, Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Syriac, Church Slavonic and other languages. Leading articles give overviews of genres and historiographical traditions, and thematic entries cover particular features of medieval chronicles and such general issues as authorship and patronage, as well as questions of art history. Textual transmission is emphasized, and a comprehensive manuscript index makes a useful contribution to the codicology of chronicles.