archives@tulane.edu / 1 / Nicolette V Levy

This manuscript is housed at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, and its catalogue designation is TCD 592 (T). It was published face a face with the other medieval manuscript of the same title (Rawlinson B 490) by the EETS with marginal glosses in 1898. This is the first time it is presented with full critical apparatus, however. / It is likely that T is a late fifteenth century copy of an early fifteenth century translation which was probably done by James Yonge, a Dublin notary working for James Butler, the fourth earl of Ormond. This conclusion was reached mainly because the two surviving medieval manuscripts of this work are both paired by their respective scribes with Yonge's established version of Secreta Secretorum. / Besides an apparatus criticus and textual linguistic and explanatory notes, there is an introduction describing the date, origin, authorship, and historical background of the piece with a chapter discussing Giraldus Cambrensis, author of Expugnatio Hibernica upon which T is based, and his interest in the prophetic material of Merlin Silvester. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-03, Section: A, page: 0927. / Major Professor: Eugene J. Crook. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1993.

The study attempts to show how the presence and writings of Antonio Beccadelli helped to transform the image of Alfonso IV of Aragon into the most admired and exalted sovereign and Patron of the Arts, Alfonso V the Magnanimous, King of Naples. The first chapter treats the historical, political, and religious conditions of Italy prior to Alfonso's conquest of Naples in 1442, especially from the Anjou period to the court of Robert The Wise, who started a tradition of literary and artistic Patronage in Naples. Chapter two examines the Neapolitan years of Alfonso, his judicial and administrative reforms as well as the King's relation with his subjects. Alfonso's humanistic court, the creation of his library, his passion for manuscripts and the works written in the King's honor represent the contents of the third chapter. Beccadelli's major work De dictis et factis Alphonsi Regis Aragonum is analyzed in Chapter Four with the purpose of showing the idealization of Alfonso's figure and the rapport between the author and his friend and royal protector. Additional elements, such as the Triumphal Arch, medals and coins showing Alfonso as a symbol of imperial glory are included in the fifth chapter to further validate the thesis's premise of Alfonso's transformation. Literary sources from the centuries following Alfonso's era illustrate the fame acquired in Spain and in Italy by the Aragonese sovereign, especially through the ever-increasing popularity of Beccadelli's Dictis et factis. In fact, the work was translated into several languages and excerpts of it were even incorporated in other collections of similar genre, for the transformation of Alfonso's image and his renown through the centuries that followed his death is indeed due exclusively to Antonio Beccadelli's book. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-02, Section: A, page: 0501. / Major Professor: David H. Darst. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1989.

Chaucer's insistence on the name of Sarpedon signals the importance of the Iliad, with its treatment both of the hero and the theme of necessity, for the development of his Troilus. Chaucer's access to the Iliad was second hand through the Italians who were cultural heirs to the Greeks. The story of Homer's Troy reached Chaucer through three traditions: the classical, euhemeristic, and epic recountings of the people and gods of Troy; the romance tales of the fall of Troy and its lovers; the Christian mythographic allegorizing of the Trojan material. The mythographic is itself an offshoot of the epic because it also treats of Gods and men while the romance debunks the otherworldly in favor of earthly affairs. Finally, Chaucer takes a pagan tale, views it through a Dantean lens, and presents it to a fourteenth century Christian audience, integrating the romance back into the epic by expanding its scope beyond the material universe ruled by fate to a world within the Dantean universe which uses fate as an instrument of Providence but leaves men free to choose. Chaucer's Troilus, developed from Priam's two word epitaph to the hero and derived from Sarpedon, Achilles, and Hector, becomes more understandable in light of Sarpedon's acknowledgment of fate and assertion of will. Chapter One traces Sarpedon and necessity from Homer to Chaucer through the epic material about Troy. Chapter Two develops the emergence of Chaucer's Troilus from the suppressed deeds and characteristics of Homer's Sarpedon, Achilles, and Hector. Chapter Three examines Chaucer's adaptation of the mythographic method. In place of Christian allegoresis he employs myth as subtext, using Sarpedon's feast as a center of a debate about fate and using Cassandra to join the fates of Thebes to Troy and Troy to London. Chapter Four explores the Thomistic synthesis, examining the necessity soliloquy as scholastic parody and comic center for Chaucer's theme of fate and will and using Dantes's Purgatorio to interpret Troilus' Christian apotheosis, beyond the pagan apotheosis of Sarpedon's immortalization as hero, by Troilus' removal to the spheres of the Dantean universe.

A lenda da Condessa traidora é um relato ficcional que surge pela primeira vez na historiografia medieval peninsular nos finais do século XII, na Crónica Najarense. Ao longo dos dois séculos seguintes (século XIII-XIV) a Lenda conheceu reescritas em Castela (Toledano, Versão Crítica, Versão Amplificada). Em Portugal, a Lenda comparece na obra intitulada Crónica Geral de Espanha de 1344 do conde dom Pedro de Barcelos, neto de Dom Dinis e bisneto do rei Sábio, Afonso X de Castela. Este trabalho faz uma análise das várias versões da Lenda, um estudo das personagens mais importantes bem como das circunstâncias contextuais que rodearam a reescrita da Lenda, que foi sendo construída com material de origem diversa como por exemplo o Conto de Salomão. O estudo da Lenda da Condessa Traidora permite levantar questões relacionadas com a misoginia medieval, com a terra de Espanha e também com a problemática textual dos manuscritos portugueses e castelhanos que testemunham as obras historiográficas medievais.

In this study the manuscript transmission, dissemination and reception of Gerald of Wales’ Topographia Hibernica (TH) and William of Rubruck’s Itinerarium ad partes Orientales (Itinerary) in England c.1185-1500 have been explored. The TH and the Itinerary are well known texts and have been carefully examined by modern scholars. Nevertheless, the afterlives of these two medieval texts have largely been neglected. Similarities in the authors’ approach and interests alongside the obvious difference in subject matter, i.e. the focus on two opposing ends of the believed peripheries of the world, have made the two texts worthy of consideration together. In chapters I and II, the extant manuscripts of each text have been been examined. As a consequence, the list of extant TH manuscripts, as provided by Robert Bartlett and Catherine Rooney, has been supplemented with two additional medieval manuscripts. The number of known medieval manuscripts of the Itinerary has also increased with the inclusion of one previously thought lost. In addition, through the examination of the manuscripts, the surviving attestations from catalogues and correspondence and through the subsequent re-use of the texts within other medieval narratives, this study offers a geographical and literary mapping of the dissemination of both works. It also examines the various uses to which the TH and the Itinerary were put, highlighting in particular the political significance of each text. Furthermore, in chapter III the contents of each manuscript containing the TH or the Itinerary are considered in order to explore the significance, if any, of the accompanying texts. The study culminates in chapter IV with an examination of three medieval bibliophiles: Simon Bozoun, John Erghome and John Gunthorpe, whose association with one or other of the text have offered a further contextualisation of the interest in the text, particularly in relation to their wider book collections. An approach which considers the text’s afterlife contextualises the work within its literary and socio-cultural milieus offering a wealth of information. By examining the availability of, and to a lesser extent the uses of, information regarding the Irish and the Mongols in England through these two specific texts, this study also hopes to help enhance our understanding of English attitudes to the two geographical extremities of the known medieval world.

Critics have offered many views about the structure of Piers Plowman. Provided with few clues, they have tried to determine from the dominant features the poem's organizing factors. However, since 1926, when G. R. Owst suggested in Preaching in Medieval England that the meaning of Piers would become clear if the poem were compared in its thematic and artistic elements with sermon literature (295-296), only a few critics have discussed Langland's use of the sermon form. This present study argues that Langland structured his poem as a sermon to answer the Dreamer's question, "How I may saue my soule?" (B. I. 84), and to explain that salvation is attained by knowing and observing the love commandments, a Scriptural theme frequently treated in the sermons of the time. By comparing the structure of Piers with that of the sermon as Robert of Basevorn describes in Forma praedicandi (1322), I show that Langland forms his poem with the use of sermon "ornaments": invention of theme, antetheme/protheme, prayer concluding the antetheme, restatement of theme, division and confirmation of divisions, and concluding prayer. In addition, I show that the visions and passus, which are interrupted with the Dreamer's awakening, form subdivisions in each of the sections. I also show that Langland uses dream-allegory, dramatic-narrative, and satirical exempla to embellish his explanation of salvation. This parallel of the "art" in Langland's poem with the "art" of preaching shows that the poem has a definite structural and thematic unity and that the logical plan makes Christian belief concerning salvation understandable, instructive, and persuasive.

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Medieval Japan was a fluid society in which many wanderers, including religious preachers, traveled the roads. One popular band of itinerant proselytizers was the jishū from the Yugyō school, a gender inclusive Amida Pure Land Buddhist group. This dissertation details the particular circumstances of the jishū nuns through the evolving history of the Yugyō school. The aim is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the gender relations and the changing roles women played in this itinerant religious order. Based on the dominant Buddhist view of the status of women in terms of enlightenment, one would have expected the Buddhist schools to have provided only minimal opportunities for women. While the large institutionalized monasteries of the time do reflect this perspective, schools founded by hijiri practitioners, such as the early Yugyō school, contradict these expectations. This study has revealed that during the formation of the Yugyō school in the fourteenth century, jishū nuns held multiple and strong roles, including leadership of mix-gendered practice halls. Over time, as the Yugyō school became increasingly institutionalized, both in their itinerant practices and in their practice halls, there was a corresponding marginalization of the nuns. This thesis attempts to identify the causes of this change and argues that the conversion to a fixed lifestyle and the adoption of mainstream Buddhist doctrine discouraged the co-participation of women in their order.