ACMRS
Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Bonnensis; proceedings.
Proceedings of an August 2003 conference held in Bonn, Germany. Following the full, detailed program of the conference and the text of the opening presidential address, the text contains five plenary papers, followed by 75 contributions arranged alphabetically by author's last name. Twenty-five of the documents are in English, the remainder in German, Italian, French, and Spanish. A sampling of topics: Neo-Latin literary monuments to Renaissance Rome and the Papacy 1553-1557; physiognomy in the works of Galeotto Marzio; learned Protestant women and the reformation of the Latin language; Buchanan in Poland — facts, questions, and paradoxes; Valeriano's Hieroglyphica and the encyclopedic project; theological treatises in Sweden and Germany circa 1700 — style, phraseology, and vocabulary; the death of Murmellius (1480-1517) according to Buschius; and the reception of Icelandic literature in Neo-Latin literary histories. Published by the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Building the kingdom; Giannozzo Manetti of the material and spiritual edifice.
In a day when to be an intellectual was to also be a cleric, he thought, and yet was a layman. In an era when to be rich was not necessarily to be generous, his was a relatively open hand. Further, while others built monuments to themselves he built words that described what those monuments actually said about literature, history and spirituality. Smith (history of medieval and Renaissance architecture, Harvard U.) and O'Connor (classics, Georgetown U.) offer Manetti's detailed texts on fascinating aspects of papal court life, in which he was intimately involved, as they related to building projects that served to reinforce power and privilege. Their translations are accessible and their commentaries are thorough, making for exciting reading and true insight into what a well-educated layman actually thought about symbols of power. Published by the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Equity cases in the Court of Exchequer, 1660 to 1714.
Plaintiffs and respondents were of high or low estate, and their property could be counted by a few hooves or by the thousands of hectares, but as long as their disputes had something to do with the crown and royal revenue, they stood before the judges to determine an equitable outcome. The cases here are fascinating, and mirror the concerns of early modern society, which seem to be closer to our fearful and acquisitive age than we recognize. The editor provides a strong introduction and commendable indices of cases, persons and places. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Erotic tales from medieval Germany.
About 200 examples are known of the genre mæren, short verse German narratives with erotic, didactic, or moral contents, mostly written between 1250 and 1500. Classen has selected and translated 20 of them, primarily for his students of Medieval German literature. He introduces each with information about its date and provenance, its author, and its published or manuscript source. One is given in both English and German. There is no index. The publisher is the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Francis Lodwick (1619/1694) a country not named (MS. Sloane 913, Fols. 1r/33r); an edition with an annotated primary bibliography and an introductory essay on Lodwick and his intellectual context.
Until recently, Francis Lodwick (1619-1694) has largely been known to early modern scholars as phonetician and language-planner, but if one looks at his more obscure manuscripts, Lodwick emerges as "freethinker, pre-Adamite, Socinian, utopianist, alchemist, philosemite, supporter of divorce and usury, [and] avid reader of La Peyrére and Hierocles," according to Poole (Tutorial Fellow in English, New College, Oxford, UK), who here presents Lodwick's all but unknown short utopia A Country Not Named, chosen for publication because it draws together Lodwick's linguistic, social, and theological interests. Poole also includes an introduction placing the work in context of Lodwick's life and intellectual milieu, as well as annotated primary and secondary bibliographies. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Myth in early northwest Europe.
Considering that the studies look at the Iron Age, Carolingians, the Anglo-Saxon, and Medieval Celtic traditions, September 2001 does not seem like such a long time ago for them to have been presented at that conference in Manchester. Medievalists from a number of countries continue the recent trend of focusing on mythology and myth-making in limited cultural spheres, rather than — as the pioneers in the field did — trying to find human universals. The Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies continues to present important studies by some of the most reputable medievalists working today. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Re-reading Thomas Traherne; a collection of new critical essays.
Traherne is a mystery. Dobell unearthed and published the work of this seventeenth-century poet work in the early twentieth century, calling Traherene a mystic and a saint. However, others still struggle with the canonicity of Traherne's known work. Under the auspices of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS), the contributors of these nine essays and take on some of the mysteries and locate Traherne within his interest in the disabled body, his response to the laws of property, his approach to the ethics of appropriation as compared to that of Richard Allestree, his prelapsarian speech and that of his contemporaries, his take on the Psalms and heaven, his visual language, his understanding of self and Other and his interesting parallels with Husserl on consciousness. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
