Geographies of philological knowledge

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Eric Jager

Why was the story of Adam, Eve, and the Serpent so important to medieval literary culture? Eric Jager argues that during the Middle Ages the story of the Fall was incorporated into a comprehensive myth about language. Drawing on a wide range of texts, Jager shows how patristic and medieval authors used the Fall to confront practical and theoretical problems in many areas of life and thought - including education, hermeneutics, rhetoric, feudal politics, and gender relations. Jager explores the Fall's meaning for clergy and laity, nobles and commoners, men and women. Among the works Jager discusses are texts by Ambrose, Augustine, the early Christian poet Avitus, and scholastic authors; Old English biblical epics; Middle English spiritual writings; French courtesy books; and the poetry of Dante and Chaucer. Examples from the visual arts are included as well. Jager links medieval interpretations of the Fall to underlying cultural anxieties about the ambiguity of the sign, the instability of oral tradition, the pleasure of the text, and the many rhetorical guises of the tempter's voice. He also assesses the modern and postmodern legacy of the Fall, showing how this myth continues to embody central ideas concerning language . The Tempter's Voice will be essential reading for scholars and students in such fields as medieval studies, literary theory, gender theory, comparative literature, cultural history, and the history of religion.

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A.J. Boyle

"Tragic Seneca undertakes a radical re-evaluation of Seneca's plays, their relationship to Roman imperial culture and their instrumental role in the evolution of the European theatrical tradition." "Tragic Seneca attempts to restore Seneca to a central position in the European literary tradition. It will provide readers and directors of Seneca's plays with the essential critical guide to their intellectual, cultural and dramatic complexity."--Jacket.

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Patricia Pogal

This book examines the origin of the medieval Spanish concept of light and the poetic function which luminous imagery serves. It concludes with an investigation of the traditional element (radiance) in the balladry of three Spanish poets: Lope de Vega, the Duque de Rivas, and Federico García Lorca.

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Nick Tosches

Celebrating the dark origins of our most American music, Country reveals a wild shadowland of history that encompasses blackface minstrels and yodeling cowboys; honky-tonk hell and rockabilly heaven; medieval myth and musical miscegenation; sex, drugs, murder; and rays of fierce illumination on Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and others, famous and forgotten, whose demonology is America's own. Profusely and superbly illustrated, Country stands as one of the most brilliant explorations of American musical culture ever written.