John Hines

Allen J. Frantzen

The essays in this collection seek to connect “Cædmon's Hymn” to Bede's material world in various ways. Each chapter begins with the hymn and moves from the text to the worlds of scientific thought, settlements and social hierarchy, monastic reform, ordinary things, and others.

Six Essays

Cædmon's Hymn and Material Culture in the World of Bede

Anglo-Saxon Keywords presents a series of entries that reveal the links between modern ideas and scholarship and the central concepts of Anglo-Saxon literature, language, and material culture. Reveals important links between central concepts of the Anglo-Saxon period and issues we think about today Reveals how material culture—the history of labor, medicine, technology, identity, masculinity, sex, food, land use—is as important as the history of ideas Offers a richly theorized approach that intersects with many disciplines inside and outside of medieval studies

Anglo-Saxon Keywords

This book is designed for the medievalist interested in contemporary criticism but cautious about its limits. The volume's essays are not designed to offer rereadings of familiar texts, but to address the problems of articulating tradition and contemporary theory. Each contributor interprets critical methods as consciously chosen and spoken "languages," and explores the consequences of combining a traditional and a contemporary method, and hence, speaking two languages. Each essay includes a critical bibliographical note pointing to further reading in the languages it employs.

Traditional Disciplines and Contemporary Theory in Medieval Studies

Speaking Two Languages

"If "variety distinguishes Chaucer's handling of his materials," as Allen J. Frantzen writes his preface to this volume, it also distinguishes Frantzen's handling of his materials - the contents and contexts of Troilus and Criseyde. Of the few available introductory studies on Chaucer's poem, fewer still accommodate the multiplicity of ideas at play both within the text and among the various interpretations of it that have fallen in and out of vogue since the work first appeared in medieval London." "Troilus and Criseyde's story of failed love amid the ruins of war often yields discussion of the traditions of courtly love and other nuances of medieval aristocratic and intellectual life. Frantzen, offering a complex analysis of the narrative that asks readers to grapple with its social, sexual, philosophical, and even comedic motifs, challenges many preconceived ideas about medieval culture and about Chaucer as its chief spokesman." "The device Frantzen uses to focus on the poem from so many perspectives is the frame. The textual frame delineates the reader's view of a narrative "exactly as a visual frame encloses a picture," Frantzen writes. "History has placed many frames around Troilus and Criseyde, and Chaucer has placed many frames within the poem as a means of structuring his complex plot. To concentrate on the frame is not to forget the text but is rather to ask how and where we see its edges, its openings, its points of contact with the world around it."" "In the early chapters of this volume Frantzen presents many of the almost innumerable and sometimes contradictory frames that Chaucer and history have provided: Troilus and Criseyde as tragedy, as comedy, as philosophy; as tale of the inevitable failure of romantic love, of betrayal, of morality, of Christian piety, of the evils of fallen womanhood, of the evils of men's victimization of women. For the balance of the study Frantzen offers his own close reading of the poem, regarding each of its five books from a distinct, though not exclusive, frame of reference: the narrator; Pandarus, Troilus's influential friend; love; war; and fate." "Unlike the buoyantly optimistic Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde offers a pessimistic view of the world. Yet it should not be viewed as secondary to its more popular successor, says Frantzen. This often dark, highly compressed story of human fallibility has been taken up by one generation of readers after another, each finding in it a relevant message. Frantzen encourages contemporary readers to join the long tradition of framing and reframing the poem, isolating the values they wish to attach to it: "To frame and reframe is to demystify a work and its critical tradition without degrading the history of either or arguing for or against the work's status as a 'classic.'"--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The Poem and the Frame

Troilus and Criseyde

CAEDMON'S HYMN AND MATERIAL CULTURE IN THE WORLD OF BEDE

Since the publication of John Boswell's Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, historians have accepted the view that the early Middle Ages tolerated and even fostered same-sex relations and that intolerance of homosexuality developed only late in the medieval period. In this extraordinary study, Allen J. Frantzen challenges this long-held belief, showing that the early medieval Church did not tolerate same-sex acts, and, furthermore, that men and women during this time who preferred homosexual relations pursued their desires in spite of official sanctions. The early medieval period was, Frantzen argues, an age before people recognized the existence - or the possibility - of the "closet."

Same-Sex Love from "Beowulf" to "Angels in America"

Before the Closet

Anglo-Saxon Keywords presents a series of entries thatreveal the links between modern ideas and scholarship and thecentral concepts of Anglo-Saxon literature, language, and materialculture. Reveals important links between central concepts of theAnglo-Saxon period and issues we think about today Reveals how material culture—the history of labor,medicine, technology, identity, masculinity, sex, food, landuse—is as important as the history of ideas Offers a richly theorized approach that intersects with manydisciplines inside and outside of medieval studies

Examining the intolerance of homosexuality in the early medieval period, this study challenges the long-held belief that the early Middle Ages tolerated same-sex relations. The work focuses on Anglo-Saxon literature but also includes examinations of contemporary opera, dance and theatre.

The Literature of Penance in Anglo-Saxon England

In the popular imagination, World War I stands for the horror of all wars. The unprecedented scale of the war and the mechanized weaponry it introduced to battle brought an abrupt end to the romantic idea that soldiers were somehow knights in shining armor who always vanquished their foes and saved the day. Yet the concept of chivalry still played a crucial role in how soldiers saw themselves in the conflict. Here for the first time, Allen J. Frantzen traces these chivalric ideals from the Great War back to their origins in the Middle Ages and shows how they resulted in highly influential models of behavior for men in combat. Drawing on a wide selection of literature and images from the medieval period, along with photographs, memorials, postcards, war posters, and film from both sides of the front, Frantzen shows how such media shaped a chivalric ideal of male sacrifice based on the Passion of Jesus Christ. He demonstrates, for instance, how the wounded body of Christ became the inspiration for heroic male suffering in battle. For some men, the Crucifixion inspired a culture of revenge, one in which Christ's bleeding wounds were venerated as badges of valor and honor. For others, Christ's sacrifice inspired action more in line with his teachings—a daring stay of hands or reason not to visit death upon one's enemies. Lavishly illustrated and eloquently written, Bloody Good will be must reading for anyone interested in World War I and the influence of Christian ideas on modern life.

Allen J. Frantzen

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