Most of the seven million people who visit the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris each year probably do not realize that the legendary gargoyles adorning this medieval masterpiece were not constructed until the nineteenth century. The first comprehensive history of these world-famous monsters, The Gargoyles of Notre-Dame argues that they transformed the iconic thirteenth-century cathedral into a modern monument.Michael Camille begins his long-awaited study by recounting archi...

What do they all mean – the lascivious ape, autophagic dragons, pot-bellied heads, harp-playing asses, arse-kissing priests and somersaulting jongleurs to be found protuding from the edges of medieval buildings and in the margins of illuminated manuscripts? Michael Camille explores that riotous realm of marginal art, so often explained away as mere decoration or zany doodles, where resistance to social constraints flourished.Medieval image-makers focused attention on the underside ...

The British Library’s Luttrell Psalter is probably the best known of all English illuminated manuscripts; even before it was bought for the nation in 1929, social historians were using it to illustrate early fourteenth-century agrarian life in the English Midlands.In Mirror in Parchment Michael Camille presents a far-reaching analysis and critique of the use of these illuminations as records of historical experience, and rethinks the relationship between them and the const...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR, BOOKPAGE, AND SHELF AWARENESS •“Paula McLain is considered the new star of historical fiction, and for good reason. Fans of The Paris Wife will be captivated by Circling the Sun, which . . . is both beautifully written and utterly engrossing.”—Ann Patchett, Country LivingThis powerful novel transports readers to the breathtaking world of...

For more than a thousand years, the adventures of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table have been retold across Europe. They have inspired some of the most important works of European literature, particularly in the medieval period: the romances of Chrétien de Troyes, Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. In the nineteenth century, interest in the Arthurian legend revived with Tennyson, Wagner and Twain. This Companion o...

The medieval period was one of extraordinary literary achievement sustained over centuries of great change, anchored by the Norman invasion and its aftermath, the re-emergence of English as the nation's leading literary language in the fourteenth century and the advent of print in the fifteenth. This Companion spans four full centuries to survey this most formative and turbulent era in the history of literature in English. Exploring the period's key authors - Chaucer, Langland, the Gawain-...

The meaning of our concern for mortal remains—from antiquity through the twentieth centuryThe Greek philosopher Diogenes said that when he died his body should be tossed over the city walls for beasts to scavenge. Why should he or anyone else care what became of his corpse? In The Work of the Dead, acclaimed cultural historian Thomas Laqueur examines why humanity has universally rejected Diogenes's argument. No culture has been indifferent to mortal remain...

The drama of the English Middle Ages is perennially popular with students and theatre audiences alike, and this is an updated edition of a book which has established itself as a standard guide to the field. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, second edition continues to provide an authoritative introduction and an up-to-date, illustrated guide to the mystery cycles, morality drama and saints' plays which flourished from the late fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries. T...

The study of medieval literature has experienced a revolution in the last two decades, which has reinvigorated many parts of the discipline and changed the shape of the subject in relation to the scholarship of the previous generation. 'New' texts (laws and penitentials, women's writing, drama records), innovative fields and objects of study (the history of the book, the study of space and the body, medieval masculinities), and original ways of studying them (the Sociology of the Text, per...

Printed images were ubiquitous in early modern Britain, and they often convey powerful messages which are all the more important for having circulated widely at the time. Yet, by comparison with printed texts, these images have been neglected, particularly by historians to whom they ought to be of the greatest interest. This volume helps remedy this state of affairs. Complementing the online digital library of British Printed Images to 1700 (www.bpi1700.org.uk), it offers a series of essay...

The saints were the superheroes and the celebrities of medieval England, bridging the gap between heaven and earth, the living and the dead. A vast body of literature evolved during the middle ages to ensure that everyone, from kings to peasants, knew the stories of the lives, deaths and afterlives of the saints. However, despite its popularity and ubiquity, the genre of the Saint's Life has until recently been little studied. This collection introduces the canon of Middle English hagiogra...

Covering both formal and informal education, this volume examines Renaissance education in England and Italy, set within the relevant social, political and historical context.