Thesis (M.M.) / This thesis explores the role played by medieval images, music, and poetry in the Mittelalter movement of German folk rock in order to uncover its ideological underpinnings and comment on its artistic and social value. This is achieved through analysis of select recordings, music videos, and interviews with Mittelalter artists, as well as "digital ethnography" carried out on fan forums dedicated to Mittelalter bands. It is determined that the movement as a whole has a strong liberal bias and is less concerned with portraying historical accuracy than it is in championing individual freedom, growth, and tolerance. This thesis concludes that its artistic value varies widely but that its great value lies in the culture of collaborative creativity it fosters.

This dissertation considers as cultural artifacts surviving manuscripts of legendaries (collections of saints' lives) that focus on female saints. By the conventional count, there are only two English legendaries of women from the period 1200–1650, Osbern Bokenham's and Ralph Buckland's. This count obscures the pattern I have discerned in extant manuscripts: throughout the medieval period and into the seventeenth century, multiple female saints' lives often appear together in the same book. These groupings occur in manuscripts exclusive of male saints' lives, indicating a long-term concern with female sanctity. Privileging manuscript-culture standards over those of print culture, I stretch the term “legendary” to accommodate more than just those collections of saints' lives that stand alone, designating any grouping of three or more vitae within the same book even if they appear in a codex alongside other kinds of texts. Along with Bokenham's and Buckland's, I discuss the legendaries found in Bodley 34, Cotton Domitian A xi, Harley 4012, Arundel 168, Douce 114, Brian Anslay's 1521 translation of Christine de Pisan's Book of the City of Ladies, Archives Départementales du Nord 20 H 7, and the Life of Elizabeth Cary. My broadening of the term “legendary,” along with an inclusive definition of “English” (to indicate language or geography, rather than both), raises the count from two English legendaries of women to nine: they are not as rare as first scholarly glance suggests, but comprise a previously-unexamined genre. That so many examples are extant, and that the “legendary of women” persists beyond the Reformation (and beyond English borders), suggests the form resonated strongly with multiple audiences. Legendaries represented access to a reader's favorite vitae; stories could be chosen to fit the number of pages a patron could afford. I examine the significance of this selection along two dimensions. First, I consider the reciprocal relationships among the legendaries, female readers, and the larger religious culture. Second, in addition to placing these narratives in their manuscript contexts, I offer literary analyses of the individual vitae to demonstrate how they, and by extension these legendaries, were versatile enough to accommodate readers from vastly different backgrounds.

This analysis is limited to those Ideal Structures found in the 84 lines of text commonly called "Hrothgar's Homily." Essentially, each line is analyzed in the following manner: (1) The two or three words carrying the sound patterning for the line are noted. (2) Each occurrence of the stem-syllables and derived forms (derived forms are considered to be variants of the words) are checked in Klaeber's glossary. Occurrences are double-checked using Bessinger & Smith's Concordance. (3) All lines containing the stem-syllables and derived forms are checked to see whether that particular word participates in the dominant sound-patterning of that verse line. If it does, it is so designated on the master list. (4) The lists of each of the two words in the original line are then compared to find the percentage of simultaneous designated. (5) The lines in which these structures occur are then compared and analyzed to determine a patter of meaning and to see if the Ideal Structure affects that line even when it is negated or contrasted. The Structures commonly appear every three lines except in two portions of the text, lines 1730-1751 and 1769-1783. Twelve Structures were found. The Structures have been classified in three groups based on their information content. Type A, Primal Structures, is the least represented, but perhaps the oldest. It is represented by one Structure: fyr/flod in line 1764. Type B Structures are the Structures that deal with the interrelationships within the society, namely the reciprocal duties of king and people. The five Structures within this classification are: sod secgan (1700), fremman/folc (1701), halep/help (1709), leod/laer (1722), and wuldor/waldend (1752). Type C Structures describe the personal attributes of the Anglo-Saxon warrior. The Structures within this class are: maegen/mod (1706), dead/dom (ll. 1712, 1768), maere/mon (1715), mon/mod (1729), faege/faellan (1755), and wig/weord (1783). The placement of the Structures contributes to the content and significance of the speech. The Structures enable the audience to understand the ritual significance of Hrothgar's speech and they reflect the themes which concern the poet in the speech. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.)

What can we learn about the Intellectual history of the pre-modern Islamic world by examining the science of music? This dissertation addresses how the science of music, as a body of knowledge, was appropriated from its Greek origins, how this science was then reproduced and disseminated throughout Islamic civilization, and how Muslim society situated it vis-à-vis Islamic tradition. Widely considered to be an art today, music in the medieval Islamic world was categorized as one of the four branches of the mathematical sciences, alongside arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy; indeed, some philosophers and scholars of music went as far as linking music with medicine and astrology as part of an interconnected web of cosmological knowledge. This dissertation examines the epistemological tools and techniques that contributed to the production of musical knowledge from the early medieval to the early modern period (9th–17th centuries CE). This knowledge was often produced through the patronage of both the ruling and the urban elite classes. Furthermore, this dissertation demonstrates how this science was preserved and subsequently transmitted by scholars of the mathematical disciplines through manuscripts. By studying the marginalia and super commentaries of these manuscripts, it demonstrates how scholars in the Islamic world understood and engaged the tradition of the science of music.

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This dissertation examines vernacular saint plays in French, Italian, and English from the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries. It focuses on the genre of hagiographic drama as an expression of popular religion and popular culture in the Middle Ages, serving as a test of current theories pertaining to popular culture. Sociohistorical methods are employed throughout the work as a basis for determining the role of religious theater in medieval society. Contextual analyses of theoretical approaches are provided, including New Historicism, the theory of Mikhail Bakhtin, and the work of Victor Turner. The chapters offer information concerning the cultic traditions that gave rise to the saint plays, an examination of social changes related to the performances, aesthetic conventions, and issues of reception.

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Throughout the course a long life in which he served as a cleric, a Cluniac monk, and an archbishop, Hugh of Amiens (c. 1085-1164) wrote a number of works including poems, biblical exegesis, anti-heretical polemics, and one of the early collections of systematic theology. This dissertation aims to provide an intellectual biography of Hugh which grants a better understanding not only of his motivations and ideals, but also some of those of the wider clerical and monastic world of the twelfth century. It examines each of Hugh's theological and literary compositions with their manuscript distribution, chronology, and contemporary setting, giving an in-depth exegesis of the texts including their concerns, sources of material, and their meaning within the context of their day. So too does it compare him with contemporaries who were writing similar works, from the compilers of sentences to biblical versifiers. Many themes surface in this work. One of these is the influence that both the scholastic and the monastic worlds had on Hugh. His writings show that he, along with many of his contemporaries, was secure in drawing inspiration from the contemplative spirit of the cloister as well as the methodical and disputatious endeavours of the schools. Another key theme is the extensive influence of St. Augustine, not just upon Hugh's thought, but also upon the thought of most of Hugh's contemporaries. The role of Hugh's works in the origin of systematic theology also emerges, as does their relation to events in the larger religious, social, and political scene, such as the rise of popular heresies and new religious movements, the condemnation of Gilbert de la Porree (c. 1076-1154), and the schism under Pope Alexander III (c. 1100-81). It concludes that Hugh was not only an intriguing individual, but also a representative of many of the important and widespread trends of his day.