This study has several key purposes. First, it tests the potential applicability of the modern discourses of neuro- and cognitive science to the study of medieval texts and languages: more specifically, it does this by using two core methodological tools, namely the embodied view of the mind and a theory of metaphor developed collaboratively by the linguist, George Lakoff, and the philosopher, Mark Johnson, to explore the range of significances which may be drawn from the ways in which human life and existence are represented in a sample of twelfth-century Latin texts. Second, it challenges the view, held by some modern scholars, that by the medieval period Latin was an intrinsically inadequate language for the purposes of self-expression. And finally, it problematises the existing discourses in medieval studies on the individual, self, and subjectivity, first, by developing a new mode of analysing the mental lives of medieval people, and second, by challenging the view that advanced forms of self-awareness were “discovered” during the twelfth century. By following this course, this study offers a number of fresh insights into twelfth-century texts and the phenomena of the individual, self, and subjectivity. Most importantly, it shows that the ways in which human life and existence are represented in medieval texts are best understood in terms of complex interactions between the biological mind and body and their effects in the world (especially their “socio-cultural” effects). From this conclusion, it is argued that the basis of the individual, self, or subject must be found, not just in socio-cultural development, but also the biological realities of human existence. Furthermore, this study contributes to existing literature on the twelfth century by exploring the range of influences, ancient and contemporary, which affected how medieval people thought about themselves and other people, while affirming their basis in the interaction between the mind, body, and culture.

This dissertation examines the nature and influence of the structural complexity of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy on Dante’s Commedia, arguing that the latter is a deliberate response to the former. The General Introduction sets the groundwork through a survey of the major scholarship on Dante and Boethius; the genre of the Consolation as understood through the modern, but inadequate, category of Menippean satire and through accessus ad auctores in the medieval commentary tradition on Boethius and related authors; and the conception of intertextuality used in the study, which is connected to both the practice of allegory and Boethius’ understanding of metaphysics. Chapter One examines the Consolation, beginning with the presentation and roles of its two major characters, Boethius and Philosophy. Anchoring the more abstract discussion of the Consolation’s structure and its scholarly interpretations is the subsequent analysis of three main themes, time, love, and prayer. Chapter Two considers five twelfth-century prosimetra and their intertextual relationships with the Consolation in order to map authorial strategies of imitation: Bernard Silvestris’ Cosmographia; Alan of Lille’s Plaint of Nature; Hildebert of Lavardin’s Liber de querimonia; Adelard of Bath’s De eodem et diverso; and Lawrence of Durham’s Consolatio de morte amici. Each work is examined for its Boethian elements and structural complexity; the most original, the Cosmographia, is considered at greatest length. This provides an overview of common interpretive and imitative options for the Consolation. Chapter Three examines the Boethian elements of Dante’s Vita Nuova and the Convivio before engaging with the Commedia in order to take issue with the prevailing scholarly opinion that the Commedia can be understood as a rejecton of Dante’s Boethian stage as symbolized by the Convivio. Through a thorough examination of the many ways the Consolation is an intertext in the Commedia, this chapter argues that the Commedia is deeply responsive to the challenges of the Consolation both philosophically and artistically, and, in fact, is positioned by Dante so as to supersede and typologically fulfill the Consolation. In conclusion, therefore, Boethius’ work is demonstrated to be integral to a proper understanding of Dante’s purpose in the Commedia.

This dissertation examines the nature and influence of the structural complexity of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy on Dante’s Commedia, arguing that the latter is a deliberate response to the former. The General Introduction sets the groundwork through a survey of the major scholarship on Dante and Boethius; the genre of the Consolation as understood through the modern, but inadequate, category of Menippean satire and through accessus ad auctores in the medieval commentary tradition on Boethius and related authors; and the conception of intertextuality used in the study, which is connected to both the practice of allegory and Boethius’ understanding of metaphysics. Chapter One examines the Consolation, beginning with the presentation and roles of its two major characters, Boethius and Philosophy. Anchoring the more abstract discussion of the Consolation’s structure and its scholarly interpretations is the subsequent analysis of three main themes, time, love, and prayer. Chapter Two considers five twelfth-century prosimetra and their intertextual relationships with the Consolation in order to map authorial strategies of imitation: Bernard Silvestris’ Cosmographia; Alan of Lille’s Plaint of Nature; Hildebert of Lavardin’s Liber de querimonia; Adelard of Bath’s De eodem et diverso; and Lawrence of Durham’s Consolatio de morte amici. Each work is examined for its Boethian elements and structural complexity; the most original, the Cosmographia, is considered at greatest length. This provides an overview of common interpretive and imitative options for the Consolation. Chapter Three examines the Boethian elements of Dante’s Vita Nuova and the Convivio before engaging with the Commedia in order to take issue with the prevailing scholarly opinion that the Commedia can be understood as a rejecton of Dante’s Boethian stage as symbolized by the Convivio. Through a thorough examination of the many ways the Consolation is an intertext in the Commedia, this chapter argues that the Commedia is deeply responsive to the challenges of the Consolation both philosophically and artistically, and, in fact, is positioned by Dante so as to supersede and typologically fulfill the Consolation. In conclusion, therefore, Boethius’ work is demonstrated to be integral to a proper understanding of Dante’s purpose in the Commedia.

This thesis examines the depiction of saintly figures within the Latin vitae of twelfth-century England (1066–c.1215). It tests the extent to which these depictions are homogeneous and examines what factors may have shaped representations. Analysis focuses on vitae of twelfth-century saints, a sample of texts that have not previously been examined as a corpus in this way. By encompassing a range of different types of saint, authors and contexts, utilising this corpus allows a comparative examination of how different facets of sainthood could be expressed in hagiography. The textual analysis at the heart of this study aims to unpick individual texts' ideals of saintly behaviour. Whilst hagiographers functioned within a well-established genre, considering a wide range of saints' vitae allows scrutiny of the impact of context in shaping depictions. It will be argued that these portrayals of saintly figures demonstrate thematic harmony which is tempered by individuality and context to form recognisable and yet distinctive depictions of sainthood. The analysis is structured around four common hagiographical themes, each worthy of detailed examination: Outer Appearance, Sexuality and Chastity, Food and Fasting, and Death. Chapter 1 investigates how saintly figures are described in terms of physical appearance, deportment and demeanour, and clothing. Chapter 2 focuses upon sexuality, exploring the manifestations of chastity and virginity within the Lives and testing how this might vary from saint to saint and between the sexes. Chapter 3 examines food and food abstention, previously under-represented in secondary literature on twelfth-century hagiography and on male saints. The thesis ends with a consideration of death, a surprisingly understudied theme in Anglophone scholarship. By examining the process of dying and the moment of mortality, this chapter will fill an important analytical vacuum between lived sanctity and sanctity in death.

This thesis examines the relationship, in theory and in practice, between the concepts of justice (iustitia) and mercy (misericordia) in English courts between c. 1100 and c. 1250. During this period English judges (in courts of both common and canon law) were faced with a serious dilemma. The emergence of systematic law had fundamentally altered the pastoral foundations of the act of judgement. On the one hand, judges were incorporated into a system of law in which justice was expected to be routine and regular. They were bound by procedure, and ‘justice’ was considered to lie in the return of due punishment for injury. On the other, this notion of strict justice coexisted with an alternative way of conceiving of judicial responsibilities, which emphasised that justice was incomplete unless it incorporated within it the principle of mercy. This tradition argued that, both for the benefit of the offender and the judge’s own soul, it was safer and more virtuous to mitigate the punishments prescribed by law. English judges were caught in a dilemma, and were, in effect, obliged to choose between two fundamentally opposed ideas of justice, and two starkly contrasting approaches to sentencing. This thesis argues that such a choice was a problem which concerned the schools of theology as much as it did the courts of law. It examines the attempts of theologians and lawyers to resolve the dilemma and provide practical counsel to judges. Scripture, classical philosophy and patristic texts were the key sources in a discussion of how judicial discretion should be exercised in choosing between punitive and merciful courses of action. Rather than conceiving of justice as a purely procedural exercise, English law, and English judges, appreciated that the act of giving judgement was a complex pastoral challenge.

This thesis attempts to situate three Hispano-Latin histories within the broader context of twelfth-century Spanish literature that includes chronicle writing and vernacular epic. The Introduction traces the development of Latin historiography in Leon from the ninth century, highlighting features still evident in the twelfth-century histories. It also describes the evolution of Spain's heroic age in Castile and contrasts this with the Reconquest aspirations of Lean. The one inspired epic poetry, the other a complementary form of celebratory literature: the heroic biography. Each history celebrated the deeds of one man: Rodrigo Diaz in the Historia Roderici, Alfonso V1 in the Historia Silence and Alfonso VII in the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatcris. The final section of the Introduction outlines the approach to these works, which focuses on form in relation to theme, on the significance of a heightened form of expression and on point of view. In the following three chapters, these aspects are examined in each work in relation to the portrayal of the central figure. Chapter II examines also the panegyrical Carmen Campidoctoris and concludes with a comparison of the attitudes of the poet of the Cantar de Mio Cid and the historian of the Historia Roderici to their subject-matter. The second part of Chapter III distinguishes between the Historic Silense and the Liber chronicerum of Pelayo with which it has been compared. Chapter IV includes a separate study of the verse section of the Chronica Adefonsi Irnperatoris, the Poem de Almeria, but the latter is seen as an integral part of the history. Chapter V draws together aspects of the preceding chapters, for it studies the Cronica Majerense c as a cross-section of twelfth-century Spanish literature, its material being drawn from chronicles, histories and heroic legends. Finally, the historical writings of the twelfth century are related to broadly defined categories of chronicle, biography and history. Chapter VI examines common stylistic features of the Latin works and of vernacular epic. The first part is devoted to linguistic features and distinctive forms of phraseology, the second to narrative motifs typical of the celebratory work. An appendix-to the chapter explores the function of several of these features in one genre: the Romance epic. The approach adopted in this final chapter coincides with that sustained throughout the thesis, 'which is to highlight similarities between histories and epic, while observing the basic' differences between the two genres.

The episode framework of the Kaiserchronik is as much a semanticising structure as the chronicle’s content. If treated analogous to Hayden White’s analysis of annals the conceptual continuity of the Roman Empire as the object of narration becomes all the more clearer. The episodes are used as pegs for a wide selection of historical narratives, which are decontextualised and presented unmoored from its traditional semantic environment. Only its place in the continuous succession of emperor episodes imbues them with historical meaning. The mobility of these episodes, however, is limited as two dimensions emerge within which the chronicle does have to negotiate qualitative change which translates into historical difference and not only distance as the episode framework produces it. Next to its axial episode paradigm the Kaiserchronik also employs rhetorics as a tool to create distance. This however happens mainly to distance itself from an unspecified group of other texts. The Kaiserchronik aims to polemicise against those text which don’t share its ideas about poetic artefactuality and composition. The transformation of the Roman Empire from a pagan into a Christian one is one of the essential threads of the Kaiserchronik. The gradual substitution of the polytheistic worship of demons disguised as gods with Christian monotheism is the driving motivator behind the selection of much of the narrative material up until Constantine and Theodosius. The aim here is not to device a teleological salvation historical trajectory but to negotiate the qualitative change of religious identity in the conceptually unchanged Roman Empire. This means that Christianity even after its assertion always remains vulnerable. While the Roman Empire always remains Roman, the perspective on it and its rulers changes significantly. Even when the Roman Empire is ruled by Roman emperors the chronicle opportunistically latches on to several opportunities to emphasis the historical closeness of the Germans or of discrete German peoples to the body and history of the Roman Empire. This is especially poignant during the Caesar episode, which sees the inauguration of the Empire as an imperial genealogy and in the Charlemagne episode, which marks the switch of perspective from an internally and essentially Roman one to a transalpine on, which, however, never fully asserts a fully conceptualised Germanness.

Bernard of Morlaix was a Cluniac monk who flourished around 1140. What little is known about him, including his visit to Rome, is examined in relation to the affairs of the Cluniac family in his day. A new conjecture is advanced that he was prior of Saint-Denis de Nogent-le-Rotrou. His poems are discussed as examples of the genre of complaint literature. His treatment of the end of the world, and of death, judgement, heaven and hell, is discussed in relation to twelfth-century monasticism. His castigation of the sins of his time includes some of the earliest estates satire. His anticlericalism and his misogyny are compared with those of his contemporaries, and discussed in the context of twelfth-century monastic culture. Bernard’s classical learning is analysed and compared with that of his contemporaries, especially John of Salisbury and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. His use of metre and rhyme is examined in the context of the development of metre based on stress rather than quantity and of systematic and sustained rhyme in the Latin verse of the twelfth century. Bernard’s use of interpretive and compositional allegory is explored. Bernard is seen as a man of his time, exemplifying a number of twelfth-century characteristics, religious, educational and cultural. Special attention is paid to the Latin literary tradition, and it is suggested that the culture of the twelfth-century was in many respects a culmination rather than a renaissance.

This dissertation explores the different ways medieval authors conceived of anchoritism and solitary life by focusing on three important phases of the movement which are represented by Wulfric of Haselbury, Christina of Markyate, and fourteenth-century mystics. It is grounded in the medieval English anchoritic literature that was produced by religious scholars between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries. Initially, lacking a tradition of their own and a language to articulate the anchoritic experience, medieval hagiographers borrowed the desert imagery from the story of the early fathers who lived in the Syrian and Egyptian deserts, which they viewed as a place of solitude and physical suffering and in which they sought perfection and salvation. While acts of penitence and the sacrament of penance would never be removed from the economy of salvation, by the eleventh century, the desert was no longer a viable analogue for salvation. I argue that in the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, new ideas of what constituted salvation and how it was fulfilled were elaborated. The cell became the place in which devotion to the sacraments was fulfilled, and it was this sacramental devotion, particularly the Eucharist but also marriage and holy orders, not physical isolation that imbued anchorites with exceptional holiness and led them to salvation. A century later a new understanding of the economy of salvation emerged, which deemphasized the physical body and was grounded in mysticism or the inward migration of the spiritual center. This was the final transformation in medieval English anchoritism and the narratives of the reclusive changed to reflect that turn.

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