Kathleen M. Ashley

During the past twenty years of intellectual boundary-crossing and widespread borrowing between fields, Turner's notions of "liminality" and the "processual" have been adopted by many theorists of art and society. This is the first volume to place individual Turner concepts into the context of his entire career and to spell out their implications for literary studies.

Between Literature and Anthropology

Victor Turner and the Construction of Cultural Criticism

Wim N. M. Hüsken

Procession, arguably the most ubiquitous and versatile public performance mode until the seventeenth century, has received little scholarly or theoretical attention. Yet, this form of social behaviour has been so thoroughly naturalised in our accounts of western European history that it merited little comment as a cultural performance choice over many centuries until recently, when a generation of cultural historians using explanatory models from anthropology called attention to the processional mode as a privileged vehicle for articulation in its society. Their analyses, however, tended to focus on the issue of whether processions produced social harmony or reinforced social distinctions, potentially leading to conflict. While such questions are not ignored in this collection of essays, its primary purpose is to reflect upon salient theatrical aspects of processions that may help us understand how in the performance of “moving subjects” they accomplished their often transformative cultural work.

Processional Performance in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Moving Subjects

A collection of essays providing an interpretive study of Saint Anne - the apocryphal mother of the Virgin - in the late medieval culture. Interpreting Cultural Symbols examines the different images of Saint Anne from a variety of sources including folklore, drama, ritual, the visual arts, local and political history, hagiographic narrative and theology.

Saint Anne in Late Medieval Society

Interpreting Cultural Symbols

Robert L. A. Clark

Focusing on a broad range of texts from England, France, Germany, and Italy -- conduct and courtesy books, advice poems, devotional literature, trial records -- the contributors to Medieval Conduct draw attention to the diverse ways in which readers of this literature could interpret such behavioral guides, appropriating them to their own ends. Medieval Conduct expands the concept of conduct to include historicized practices, and theorizes the connection between texts and their concrete social uses; what emerges is a nuanced interpretation of the role of gender and class inscribed in such texts. By bringing to light these subtleties and complexities, the authors also reveal the ways in which the assumptions of literary history have shaped our reception of such texts in the past two centuries.

Medieval Conduct

Gerard NeCastro

The goal of the Middle English Texts Series is to make available to teachers and students texts which occupy an important place in the literary and cultural canon but which have not been readily available in student editions. The focus is upon literature adjacent to that normally in print, which teachers need in compiling the syllabuses they wish to teach. The editions maintain the linguistic integrity of the original work but within the parameters of modern reading conventions. The project is sponsored by the Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages (TEAMS) and is affiliated with the Medieval Institute of Western Michigan University at Kalamazoo.

Mankind

Leigh Gilmore

Gerald Peters

Exploring the connections between autobiography and postmodernism, this book addresses self-representation in a variety of literature--Native American, British, Chicana, immigrant, and lesbian, among others--in genres as diverse as poetry, naming, and confession, photography, and the manifesto. The essays examine how different writers respond to the culturally specific pressures of genre, how these constraints are negotiated, and what self-representation reveals about the politics of identity. In contrast to those critics of postmodernism who fear the dissolution of the active subject, the contributors here demonstrate that autobiography gives postmodernism a discourse through which to theorize human agency. The autobiographical subject that emerges is not the decentered human agent of so many versions of postmodernism but the producer of texts that call attention to the contradictions in dominant modes of self-representation and demonstrate the possibilities of writing from from other locations. Contributors are Betty Bergland, Andrei Codrescu, Michael M. J. Fischer, Leigh Gilmore, David P. Haney, Paul Jay, Shirley Neuman, Christopher Ortiz, Sidonie Smith, Kirsten Wasson, and Hertha D. Wong.

Autobiography & Postmodernism

Mark David Johnston

Conduct literature is a term used to identify writings that address how one should 'conduct' oneself in social situations. In the medieval period conduct literature was essential reading for nearly all literate children and adolescents to educate them in the expected social behaviours for their culture, gender, and status. Using a comparative approach, this anthology pairs together pieces of male-directed and female-directed medieval conduct literature, many being translated into English for the first time, to present an illuminating picture of medieval gender norms, parenting, literary style, and pedagogy.Containing texts written in six vernacular languages, each section is also accompanied by textual notes, an introduction, and an English translation. A fascinating examination of a diverse range of regions and cultures, Medieval Conduct Literature is a remarkable window into medieval life, customs, behaviour, and social expectations.

Kathleen M. Ashley

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