The Fabric of Marian Devotion in Isabel de Villena's Vita Christi

The Fabric of Marian Devotion in Isabel de Villena's Vita Christi
Author: Lesley K. Twomey
Publisher: Tamesis Books
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2013
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1855662485

First comprehensive survey of Isabel de Villena (Sor Isabel), the fifteenth-century Spanish nun and writer. Isabel de Villena (1430-1490) is one of the most fascinating women of the Spanish middle ages. Related to the royal family, she became abbess of the Poor Clare convent, the Santa Trinitat, in Valencia in 1462, a position she heldfor almost thirty years until her death. Her treatise on the religious life, Vita Christi, was the first book by a woman to be printed in the kingdom of Aragon. This is the first full-length survey in English of Isabel's life and literary works. The author pays particular attention to the way in which devotion to the Virgin Mary is manifested and described through material culture, on her rich fabrics, brocades, silks, shoes, and crown. The book thus highlights not only Isabel's distinctive contribution to the genre of the Vita Christi, but also reflects the status of Valencia as a centre for trade and producer of silks and velvets at the time, as well as its flourishing shoe-making industry. Lesley K. Twomey is Principal Lecturer, Hispanic Studies, Northumbria University.

Gender and Exemplarity in Medieval and Early Modern Spain

Gender and Exemplarity in Medieval and Early Modern Spain
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2020-09-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004438440

Gender and Exemplarity in Medieval and Early Modern Spain gathers a series of studies on the interplay between gender, sanctity and exemplarity in regard to literary production in the Iberian peninsula. The first section examines how women were con¬strued as saintly examples through narratives, mostly composed by male writers; the second focuses on the use made of exemplary life-accounts by women writers in order to fashion their own social identity and their role as authors. The volume includes studies on relevant models (Mary Magdalen, Virgin Mary, living saints), means of transmission, sponsorship and agency (reading circles, print, patronage), and female writers (Leonor López de Córdoba, Isabel de Villena, Teresa of Ávila) involved in creating textual exemplars for women. Contributors are: Pablo Acosta-García, Andrew M. Beresford, Jimena Gamba Corradine, Ryan D. Giles, María Morrás, Lesley K. Twomey, Roa Vidal Doval, and Christopher van Ginhoven Rey.

Divination on stage

Divination on stage
Author: Folke Gernert
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2021-02-08
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 3110695758

Magicians, necromancers and astrologers are assiduous characters in the European golden age theatre. This book deals with dramatic characters who act as physiognomists or palm readers in the fictional world and analyses the fictionalisation of physiognomic lore as a practice of divination in early modern Romance theatre from Pietro Aretino and Giordano Bruno to Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca and Thomas Corneille.

Francesc Eiximenis

Francesc Eiximenis
Author: Francesc Eiximenis
Publisher: Tamesis Books
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2008
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781855661622

A selection from the works of the Catalan Franciscan, Francesc Eiximenis. Francesc Eiximenis is an outstanding figure in the ranks of the mendicant orders who, in the late Middle Ages, strove to educate the lower echelons of society. Born in Gerona, around 1330, probably to a comfortable middle-class family, Eiximenis entered the Franciscan order at a very early age, studied in Oxford, and probably also in Paris, and obtained the degree of master of theology in Toulouse. Later he combined teaching with the composing of his works. Among these stands out the monumental and widely known Lo Crestià (The Christian), in which Eiximenis aimed to include all contemporary university knowledge, adapted for a lay public whose basic level of instruction was far below that of clerics. The same didactic purpose is seen in the Libro de los ángeles (Book of the Angels), the Libro de las mujeres (Book of the Women) and the Vita Christi. Eiximenis, by then bishop of Elna, died in 1409. Among the many themes that recur in his extensive literary production, this anthology concentrates on his ideas on the transmission of knowledge, on education and on culture. The introduction and selection of texts is by David Guixeras and Xavier Renedo. ROBERT D. HUGHES is a translator and researcher with particular expertise in the fields of fine art, the history of ideas and Catalan culture. Published in association with Editorial Barcino

Antiquities and Classical Traditions in Latin America

Antiquities and Classical Traditions in Latin America
Author: Andrew Laird
Publisher: Wiley
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2018-12-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781119559337

This collection is the first concerted attempt to explore the significance of classical legacies for Latin American history – from the uses of antiquarian learning in colonial institutions to the currents of Romantic Hellenism which inspired liberators and nation-builders in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Discusses how the model of Roman imperialism, challenges to Aristotle’s theories of geography and natural slavery, and Cicero’s notion of the patria have had a pervasive influence on thought and politics throughout the Latin American region Brings together essays by specialists in art history, cultural anthropology and literary studies, as well as Americanists and scholars of the classical tradition Shows that appropriations of the Greco-Roman past are a recurrent catalyst for change in the Americas Calls attention to ideas and developments which have been overlooked in standard narratives of intellectual history

Juana I

Juana I
Author: Gillian B. Fleming
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2018-04-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 3319743473

This book examines the deep and lengthy crisis of legitimacy triggered by the death of Prince Juan of Castile and Aragon in 1497 and the subsequent ascent of Juana I to the throne in 1504. Confined by historiography and myth to the madwoman’s attic, Juana emerges here as a key figure at the heart of a period of tremendous upheaval, reaching its peak in the war of the Comunidades, or comunero uprising of 1520–1522. Gillian Fleming traces the conflicts generated by the ambitions of Juana’s father, husband and son, and the controversial marginalisation and imprisonment of Isabel of Castile’s legitimate heir. Analysing Juana’s problems and strategies, failures and successes, Fleming argues that the period cannot be properly understood without taking into account the long shadow that Juana I cast over her kingdoms and over a crucial period of transition for Spain and Europe.

The Cultures of His Kingdom

The Cultures of His Kingdom
Author: William Tronzo
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 1997
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780691025803

A study of the well known medieval royal chapel, constructed by Roger II, king of Sicily in the mid-twelfth century.

A Companion to Observant Reform in the Late Middle Ages and Beyond

A Companion to Observant Reform in the Late Middle Ages and Beyond
Author: James Mixson
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 445
Release: 2015-06-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004297529

The Observant Movement was a widespread effort to reform religious life across Europe. It took root around 1400, and for a century and more thereafter it inspired or shaped much that became central to European religion and culture. The Observants produced many of the leading religious figures of the later Middle Ages—Catherine of Siena, Bernardino of Siena and Savonarola in Italy, Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros in Spain, and in Germany Martin Luther himself. This volume provides scholars with a current, synthetic introduction to the Observant Movement. Its essays also seek collectively to expand the horizons of our study of Observant reform, and to open new avenues for future scholarship. Contributors are Michael D. Bailey, Pietro Delcorno, Tamar Herzig, Anne Huijbers, James D. Mixson, Alison More, Carolyn Muessig, Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, Bert Roest, Timothy Schmitz, and Gabriella Zarri.