Project MUSE®: Parergon - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Parergon.daily12026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USNo. 1 (1983) through current issueLatest Articles: ParergonTWOProject MUSE®Parergon1832-83340313-6221Latest articles in Parergon. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Medieval English Attitudes to the Outside World
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976651
<p></p>
The political and intellectual cultures of medieval England were situated within networks of knowledge, communication, and trade that extended throughout Europe and beyond to Asia and Africa. English texts from across the length of the Middle Ages are demonstrative of societies that were more interested in, and connected with, this wider world than is often recognised. Importantly, such texts demonstrate a consciousness, perhaps even a hyper-consciousness, of England's position on the periphery of these networks. England looked beyond its shores for models of religious practice, for frameworks for political administration, for literary forms and trends, and even for sources of royal legitimacy (or methods of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309/image/coversmallMedieval English Attitudes to the Outside World2025-12-11text/htmlen-USMedieval English Attitudes to the Outside World2025-12-112025TWOProject MUSE®895862026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-11Hated Race? Attitudes to the Wider World in Beowulf
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976652
<p></p>
Beowulf, probably composed in 'the central kingdom of Mercia, during the late-seventh or early-eighth century', is an intercultural drama.2 It takes place across a vast area, stretching from the Sámi in the north, to the Frisians in the west, and the Goths in the east, and follows the relationships of three main dynasties, the Scyldings, the Scylfings, and the Hrethelings, as well as their subgroups, such as the Wægmundings, and the many neighbouring groups, such as the Heathobards or the Frisians.3 Although there are examples of cooperation between these groups and periods of peace, like Beowulf's own reign, the Beowulf poet depicts a world driven by conflict. As such, Beowulf offers a fascinating insight into
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309/image/coversmallHated Race? Attitudes to the Wider World in Beowulf2025-12-11text/htmlen-USHated Race? Attitudes to the Wider World in Beowulf2025-12-112025TWOProject MUSE®818662026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-11The Non-Christian as Culturally Distinct 'Other' in the Old English Judith and Elene
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976653
<p></p>
Old English poetry has long been understood as exhibiting a preoccupation with ideas of community, and social inclusion and exclusion.1 Almost all Old English narrative poems contain one instance, if not several instances, of inter- or intra-communal conflict, focusing on themes of community and social belonging.2 The elegies famously thematise exile through narratives of feud and lament, and Beowulf, with its numerous digressive episodes, explores the fragility of early medieval kinship. These texts notoriously depict communal belonging in opposition to the isolation of exile. Their focus is on the security of one's position within one's own cultural group. In these narratives where ties of secular loyalty
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309/image/coversmallThe Non-Christian as Culturally Distinct 'Other' in the Old English Judith and Elene2025-12-11text/htmlen-USThe Non-Christian as Culturally Distinct 'Other' in the Old English Judith and Elene2025-12-112025TWOProject MUSE®1604612026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-11The Earliest English Almanac? Types of Information in Early Calendrical Texts
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976654
<p></p>
Our understanding of early medieval liturgical calendars has grown substantially in recent years. Commentators have traced relatively precise patterns of geographical spread for this genre within early medieval Western Europe, passing from the Carolingian realms directly to neighbouring areas, and also via Spain to Ireland and Northumbria.1 In terms of their content, liturgical calendars tend to present a characteristic combination of calendrical, computistical, and what could be called martyrological information.2 As Immo Warntjes has noted,a calendar was, essentially, a grid of 365 days, which were populated with entries important for the communities that produced them. The basic function was a liturgical
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309/image/coversmallThe Earliest English Almanac? Types of Information in Early Calendrical Texts2025-12-11text/htmlen-USThe Earliest English Almanac? Types of Information in Early Calendrical Texts2025-12-112025TWOProject MUSE®1684662026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-11Elephants in English Literature, Art, and Material Culture before the Reign of Henry III
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976655
<p></p>
When considering early English attitudes to the outside world, it is worth considering early English speakers' attitudes towards the elephant. To people living on the island of Britain, elephants represented some of the most distant aspects of the wider world, both physically and imaginatively, yet elephants became an intimate part of early English art and literature, just as elephant imagery and tales were ubiquitous around Eurasia and Africa in the Middle Ages, far beyond their natural habitats.1 Elephants are evidence of contacts and exchange: Lyndsey Smith has recently shown that early medieval artisans on the island of Britain had more consistent access to elephant ivory than previously thought.2 This
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309/image/coversmallElephants in English Literature, Art, and Material Culture before the Reign of Henry III2025-12-11text/htmlen-USElephants in English Literature, Art, and Material Culture before the Reign of Henry III2025-12-112025TWOProject MUSE®2217242026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-11England's Enemies? Framing Feelings about Foreigners and Mercenaries in High Medieval War Narratives
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976656
<p></p>
Narrating the Battle of Fornham (St Genevieve) in 1173 posed unique challenges to contemporary English chroniclers in framing attitudes towards the external world. The battle was a crisis in a domestic war involving large numbers of foreign mercenaries, especially from Flanders.1 It occurred two miles from the prominent abbey of Bury St Edmunds, named for a tenth-century king who died defending the English against Danish invaders. The battle brought contemporary ideas about foreign fighters under scrutiny. It was a moment with the potential to affirm the potent idea of the foreign mercenary as England's enemy, or to question its relevance in understanding the nature and experience of a war. This article is not
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309/image/coversmallEngland's Enemies? Framing Feelings about Foreigners and Mercenaries in High Medieval War Narratives2025-12-11text/htmlen-USEngland's Enemies? Framing Feelings about Foreigners and Mercenaries in High Medieval War Narratives2025-12-112025TWOProject MUSE®1870292026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-11Making Excuses: The Diplomatic Anxieties of Edward I of England
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976657
<p></p>
Making polite and credible excuses was an essential artform of medieval diplomacy. On the one hand, the dynamics of seeking and granting favour were essential to expressions of noble status, and to mechanisms for securing one's interests outside one's own jurisdiction.1 Favour fostered goodwill among diplomatic interlocutors, and could promote a good and virtuous international reputation. On the other hand, however, a king could not afford to take actions that were detrimental to his own interests or position. Consequently, success on the diplomatic stage demanded the capacity to delay, defer, or even refuse to accede to a request, without, if possible, giving offence. Since largesse itself was a constitutive
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309/image/coversmallMaking Excuses: The Diplomatic Anxieties of Edward I of England2025-12-11text/htmlen-USMaking Excuses: The Diplomatic Anxieties of Edward I of England2025-12-112025TWOProject MUSE®2229172026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-11English Queenship from the Mid-Fifteenth to Mid-Sixteenth Centuries and England's Place in the European World
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976658
<p></p>
In his book on dynastic politics in medieval Europe, Robert Bartlett observed that between the Norman conquest of England in 1066 and 1464 'no English king married an English woman'.1 Whilst two royal consorts in this period, namely, Matilda of Scotland, queen to Henry I (r. 1100–35) and Matilda of Boulogne, queen to Stephen (r. 1135–54), were related to the West Saxon and Scottish royal families, it is nonetheless true that the queens were not born in England. This trend essentially paralleled continental Europe, where many rulers had by this period moved decisively towards seeking brides from other courts and regions rather than among their own aristocratic class.2In 1464, this pattern was abruptly broken in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309/image/coversmallEnglish Queenship from the Mid-Fifteenth to Mid-Sixteenth Centuries and England's Place in the European World2025-12-11text/htmlen-USEnglish Queenship from the Mid-Fifteenth to Mid-Sixteenth Centuries and England's Place in the European World2025-12-112025TWOProject MUSE®1610352026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-11New Work on Early Medieval England: England in the Early Medieval World
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976659
<p></p>
The three texts reviewed in this article belong to the England in the Early Medieval World Elements series, a book-journal hybrid format that allows historians to publish concise, focused, and responsive work on England between the fifth and eleventh centuries. The series sits within the wider Cambridge Elements project, which is a relatively new enterprise launched in 2019 that aims to provide thematic guides to current debates and subjects of interest across a variety of fields. The Elements are designed primarily for newcomers to a given field, particularly undergraduate students and non-specialist readers, to help situate them in unfamiliar pastures; that said, these texts can and should be welcome additions
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309/image/coversmallNew Work on Early Medieval England: England in the Early Medieval World2025-12-11text/htmlen-USNew Work on Early Medieval England: England in the Early Medieval World2025-12-112025TWOProject MUSE®318302026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-11A New Material Interpretation of Twelfth-Century Architecture: Reconstructing the Abbey of Saint-Denis by Jason R. Crow (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976660
<p></p>
We are so conditioned to think of Gothic as the architecture of tradition that we can easily become blind to the extraordinary process by which this style—with its tall, pointed arches, slender columns, and great glass windows—came into being in the twelfth century. Previously, churches had been built in the Romanesque style, characterised by thick walls and small round windows. This was a pre-eminently defensive style of architecture, tracing its origins to Roman military fortifications and designed to keep enemies at bay. The Gothic revolution arose not merely from technical developments, but from the practical necessity of building much larger churches without the roof either sagging or collapsing. This
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309/image/coversmallA New Material Interpretation of Twelfth-Century Architecture: Reconstructing the Abbey of Saint-Denis by Jason R. Crow (review)2025-12-11text/htmlen-USA New Material Interpretation of Twelfth-Century Architecture: Reconstructing the Abbey of Saint-Denis by Jason R. Crow (review)2025-12-112025TWOProject MUSE®80112026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-11Inscrire l'art médiéval. Objets, textes, images by Vincent Debiais (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976661
<p></p>
Vincent Debiais's Inscrire l'art médiéval is an intriguing book. The title itself is suggestive, as it brings together two distinct yet interconnected fields: epigraphy and art history. This compact formulation, almost oxymoronic in nature, immediately signals a disciplinary crossing that is both productive and conceptually charged. The relationship between texts and 'objects, images' (as indicated in the book's subtitle), between inscription and visual form, is thus placed at the centre of the investigation. Yet while the title affirms this convergence, the titles of the chapters—for example, 'Cet objet-là, cette image-ci', 'Poétique de l'objet'—are deliberately elusive and somewhat enigmatic, offering more in the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309/image/coversmallInscrire l'art médiéval. Objets, textes, images by Vincent Debiais (review)2025-12-11text/htmlen-USInscrire l'art médiéval. Objets, textes, images by Vincent Debiais (review)2025-12-112025TWOProject MUSE®78562026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-11English Literature and the Crusades, Anxieties of Holy War 1291–1453 by Marcel Elias (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976662
<p></p>
Focusing on Middle English crusade romances and employing a history of emotions approach, this book seeks to explore the deeply conflicted crusade culture in England in the period after 1291. Marcel Elias points out that crusade historians have not utilised many texts shedding light on this consideration. Beholden to a tradition of post-colonial scholarship and finding significance in the work of Edward Said, especially his epochal Orientalism, Elias deploys a methodology he describes as 'engaged historicism' (p. 6) to draw attention to the value of romances as 'remarkable cultural objects' (p. 132). These works constitute popular fiction, and Elias employs a hybrid methodology that combines 'historicist inquiry
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309/image/coversmallEnglish Literature and the Crusades, Anxieties of Holy War 1291–1453 by Marcel Elias (review)2025-12-11text/htmlen-USEnglish Literature and the Crusades, Anxieties of Holy War 1291–1453 by Marcel Elias (review)2025-12-112025TWOProject MUSE®84562026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-11Travelling Matters across the Mediterranean: Rereading, Reshaping, Reusing Objects (10th–20th Centuries) ed. by Beatrice Falcucci, Emanuele Giusti, and Davide Trentacoste (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976663
<p></p>
The inaugural volume in the Brepols book series 'Histories in Motion', Travelling Matters across the Mediterranean, explores the movement and reinterpretation of objects from the tenth to the twentieth century within the Mediterranean, broadly defined. The 'Introduction', authored by the three editors, deftly frames the theoretical considerations of the volume, which comprises nine chapters. Though it may be cliché to describe the volume as 'ambitious' in its scope—and it is—the chronological breadth of the work is secondary to its thematic strength. The volume presents research by scholars exploring how objects are shaped, reshaped, and recontextualised by their movements across temporal, spatial, and cultural
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309/image/coversmallTravelling Matters across the Mediterranean: Rereading, Reshaping, Reusing Objects (10th–20th Centuries) ed. by Beatrice Falcucci, Emanuele Giusti, and Davide Trentacoste (review)2025-12-11text/htmlen-USTravelling Matters across the Mediterranean: Rereading, Reshaping, Reusing Objects (10th–20th Centuries) ed. by Beatrice Falcucci, Emanuele Giusti, and Davide Trentacoste (review)2025-12-112025TWOProject MUSE®59712026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-11Pre-Conquest History and its Medieval Reception: Writing England's Past ed. by Matthew Firth (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976664
<p></p>
Writing England's Past is the eleventh book in the Boydell series Writing History in the Middle Ages, and is aptly composed of eleven essays from scholars associated with institutions around the globe. These contributions delve into accounts of England's history before the Norman Conquest of 1066, specifically examining how medieval authors in the post-Conquest era interpreted pre-Conquest events. The book contributes to the objective of the Boydell series, which aspires to situate the study of history-writing as fundamental to our understanding of cultural memory and social identity in the Middle Ages. The idea for this book stemmed from discussions at panel sessions held at the 2022 Leeds International Medieval
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309/image/coversmallPre-Conquest History and its Medieval Reception: Writing England's Past ed. by Matthew Firth (review)2025-12-11text/htmlen-USPre-Conquest History and its Medieval Reception: Writing England's Past ed. by Matthew Firth (review)2025-12-112025TWOProject MUSE®145182026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-11Remembering England: Cultural Memory in the Sagas of Icelanders by Matthew Firth (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976665
<p></p>
Based upon its author's doctoral dissertation, this relatively short book focusing on how England is portrayed in the Sagas of Icelanders (Íslendingasögur) covers a remarkable range of topics relating to them, England in the Viking period, saga age Iceland (here approximately 870–1050), and the Icelandic age of saga writing (c. 1220–c. 1320). Somewhat typically, therefore, it is a contribution to both saga literary criticism and to Viking Age and later medieval history.The 'Introduction' states that 'This study proposes methodological approaches to the historical analysis of saga literature, informed by theories of cultural memory, intertextuality, and cultural exchange' (p. 1). This distinguishes it from the most
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309/image/coversmallRemembering England: Cultural Memory in the Sagas of Icelanders by Matthew Firth (review)2025-12-11text/htmlen-USRemembering England: Cultural Memory in the Sagas of Icelanders by Matthew Firth (review)2025-12-112025TWOProject MUSE®81412026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-11Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World by Kristie Patricia Flannery (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976666
<p></p>
Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World is an exhaustively researched, highly readable, and compellingly argued account of the many Indigenous people who supported the imperial Spanish Philippines. Focusing on the hybrid forces formed against waves of maritime predation from the colony's enemies, Kristie Flannery challenges popular narratives through those 'whose actions fail to fulfil modern, nationalist ideals of the rebellious anti-colonial Filipino subject' (p. 2). She presents an imperial society 'formed […] from below' (p. 4), whose singular resilience emerged not solely through violent coercion, Catholic mission, or economic reform, but also the galvanising, unifying effects of maritime
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309/image/coversmallPiracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World by Kristie Patricia Flannery (review)2025-12-11text/htmlen-USPiracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World by Kristie Patricia Flannery (review)2025-12-112025TWOProject MUSE®95392026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-11The Sisterhood of Master Geert's House, Deventer: The Lives and Spirituality of the Sisters, c.1390–c.1460 by G. H. Gerrits (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976667
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This book is a gift, enabling readers to penetrate the world of religious women in Western Europe at the end of the Middle Ages. Anonymously compiled between 1460 and 1470, the Sisterbook presents the vitae of sixty-four women translated from Middle Dutch. Each of these women died between 1398 and 1456 and lived in Deventer in a house established by Geert Grote (d. 1374), a well-known figure often regarded as the founder of the Modern Devotion. The anglophone reader has the benefit of recent important studies by Regnerus Post and John van Engen. At the same time, this labour of love by Gerrit Gerrits opens the door to this fascinating world ever more widely.Before plunging into the sixty-four vitae, the reader is
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309/image/coversmallThe Sisterhood of Master Geert's House, Deventer: The Lives and Spirituality of the Sisters, c.1390–c.1460 by G. H. Gerrits (review)2025-12-11text/htmlen-USThe Sisterhood of Master Geert's House, Deventer: The Lives and Spirituality of the Sisters, c.1390–c.1460 by G. H. Gerrits (review)2025-12-112025TWOProject MUSE®88932026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-11Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis by Tao Leigh Goffe (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976668
<p></p>
In the 'Introduction' to her new book, Tao Leigh Goffe recalls sitting in a graduate seminar taught by the former prime minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair, where the 1970s were celebrated as the genesis of globalisation. Her professor, the teaching assistant, and fellow students celebrated the era 'as a booming period of economic and technological growth that brought the four corners of the earth together like never before'—she writes—'I thought of the violence of the modern world wrought by Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Caribbean carrying the cross. Faith and globalisation. Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe were all joined across the chain of islands where Indigenous peoples were
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309/image/coversmallDark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis by Tao Leigh Goffe (review)2025-12-11text/htmlen-USDark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis by Tao Leigh Goffe (review)2025-12-112025TWOProject MUSE®83262026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-11The Craft of History: Turning History into a Discipline in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries by Antoni Grabowski (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976669
<p></p>
In this book, Antoni Grabowski draws on the writings of twelfth- and thirteenth-century historians in a historiographical study that examines the evolution of history from an auxiliary discipline to theology and law to a separate field. The works he focuses on are the anonymous Status Imperii Iudaici, the Chronicle of Hélinand of Froidmont, the Chronicle of Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, and Vincent of Beauvais's Speculum Historiale. The anonymous Status Imperii Iudaici was a short chronicle about the history of the Jews up until the destruction of the Temple. The author is referred to as the 'compiler'. The works by the Cistercians Hélinand of Froidmont and Alberic of Trois-Fontaines were universal chronicles. Both
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309/image/coversmallThe Craft of History: Turning History into a Discipline in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries by Antoni Grabowski (review)2025-12-11text/htmlen-USThe Craft of History: Turning History into a Discipline in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries by Antoni Grabowski (review)2025-12-112025TWOProject MUSE®74412026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-11L'Antiquité selon Guillaume Budé. À l'école d'un humaniste érudit by Romain Menini and Luigi-Alberto Sanchi (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976670
<p></p>
This book, awarded the Prix Zappas 2025 of the Association des Études Grecques, reinvents the Renaissance scholar Guillaume Budé (1467–1540) for our day, whilst situating his work in the intellectual and political environments of his own time. Published in the Belles Lettres 'essais' series, it lives up to the expectations of the essay genre. In it, information is at the service of ideas. Hence, the book does not attempt to rewrite David O. McNeil's Guillaume Budé and Humanism in the Reign of Francis I (Droz, 1975), absent from the 'Bibliographie'. However, Sanchi has elsewhere called it 'the best English introduction to Guillaume Budé' (Oxford Bibliographies Online, s.v. 'Budé'). Instead, L'Antiquité selon
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309/image/coversmallL'Antiquité selon Guillaume Budé. À l'école d'un humaniste érudit by Romain Menini and Luigi-Alberto Sanchi (review)2025-12-11text/htmlen-USL'Antiquité selon Guillaume Budé. À l'école d'un humaniste érudit by Romain Menini and Luigi-Alberto Sanchi (review)2025-12-112025TWOProject MUSE®76192026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-11Spiritual Literature in the Late Medieval Low Countries: Essays by Thom Mertens by Thom Mertens (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976671
<p></p>
Thom Mertens has long been a towering figure in the study of Middle Dutch spiritual literature—as the editors of this volume rightly point out, he often 'found himself in the vanguard of innovations' in the field over the course of his thirty-three-year career (p. 11). It is fitting, then, that his retirement should be marked with this impressive laudatory volume. Mertens's colleagues from the University of Antwerp have assembled a collection of fifteen of his most seminal essays, nine of which are translated here into English for the very first time.The collection is divided conveniently into three thematic sections, each covering a distinct aspect of Mertens's scholarship. The first of these, 'Spiritual
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309/image/coversmallSpiritual Literature in the Late Medieval Low Countries: Essays by Thom Mertens by Thom Mertens (review)2025-12-11text/htmlen-USSpiritual Literature in the Late Medieval Low Countries: Essays by Thom Mertens by Thom Mertens (review)2025-12-112025TWOProject MUSE®84022026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-11Instrumentality: On Technical Objects and Orientation in the Later Middle Ages by J. Allan Mitchell (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976672
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J. Allan Mitchell's new book is a challenging and timely intervention. Drawing on comprehensive scholarship and underpinned by Mitchell's perceptive close reading, Instrumentality excavates the role of instrumenta in medieval thought to propose a critical instrumentality that counters the narrowly utilitarian instrumentalism that—especially when allied with transactionalism and neoliberalism—continues to sledge the humanities in plain sight. Its argument arcs towards the present in which universities find themselves, but it avoids any tinge of presentism by being firmly situated at the disciplinary intersection of manuscript studies, the history of medieval science, and the pedagogy of the medieval university. This
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309/image/coversmallInstrumentality: On Technical Objects and Orientation in the Later Middle Ages by J. Allan Mitchell (review)2025-12-11text/htmlen-USInstrumentality: On Technical Objects and Orientation in the Later Middle Ages by J. Allan Mitchell (review)2025-12-112025TWOProject MUSE®113812026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-11Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries in Studies of the Viking Age ed. by Daniel Sävborg (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976673
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Daniel Sävborg's collection offers a fresh approach to Viking Age enquiry through 'genuine interdisciplinarity' (p. 10). Scholars have long relied on a combination of fields to understand Norse culture and society, including history, literary studies, philology, archaeology, and religious studies (p. 9). Sävborg notes that while these disciplines are commonly represented in collective volumes, they are applied in a way that is more accurately defined as multidisciplinary. Multidisciplinary investigations are 'built up around questions' of the same kind (p. 10). Experts contribute to a collective volume with an overarching historical question. This question is then answered from the perspective of the expert's
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309/image/coversmallCrossing Disciplinary Boundaries in Studies of the Viking Age ed. by Daniel Sävborg (review)2025-12-11text/htmlen-USCrossing Disciplinary Boundaries in Studies of the Viking Age ed. by Daniel Sävborg (review)2025-12-112025TWOProject MUSE®87032026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-11Crusader Rhetoric and the Infancy Cycles on Medieval Baptismal Fonts in the Baltic Region by Harriet M. Sonne de Torrens (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976674
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This volume examines baptismal fonts found throughout northern Europe from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, with particular focus on Scandinavia—specifically Denmark and southern Sweden (Gotland). It is a meticulously compiled work featuring a large collection of 448 coloured photographs, 8 maps, and an extensive appendix of tables (Appendix 1) that spans 49 pages. It is drawn from a larger database of baptismal fonts, the Baptisteria Sacra Index: An Iconographical Index of Baptismal Fonts, referred to throughout the volume as BSI, a comprehensive database housed at the University of Toronto. The BSI aims to record all known fonts from the Early Christian period to the seventeenth century, with over
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309/image/coversmallCrusader Rhetoric and the Infancy Cycles on Medieval Baptismal Fonts in the Baltic Region by Harriet M. Sonne de Torrens (review)2025-12-11text/htmlen-USCrusader Rhetoric and the Infancy Cycles on Medieval Baptismal Fonts in the Baltic Region by Harriet M. Sonne de Torrens (review)2025-12-112025TWOProject MUSE®80862026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-11Notes on Contributors
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976675
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Matthew Firth is Research Fellow in Medieval History at Flinders University, supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award: 'Contesting Conquest: Pre-Modern Attempts to come to Terms with the Past'. Matthew's research focuses on historiography, cultural memory, and the transmission of historical narrative across time and place. With research specialities in the history of early medieval England and its reception, as well as in Icelandic saga literature, he has published numerous articles and book chapters on various aspects of society, culture, and historiography in England and Scandinavia in the Middle Ages, and their intersections. Matthew is the author of two
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/309/image/coversmallNotes on Contributors2025-12-11text/htmlen-USNotes on Contributors2025-12-112025TWOProject MUSE®73132026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-11