"For the will desires not to be dark, and this very desire causes the darkness” (Jacob Boehme). Moving through the fundamental question of this paradox, this book offers a constellation of theoretical and critical essays that shed light on the darkness of the will: its obscurity to itself. Through in-depth analysis of medieval and modern sources - Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, Eriugena, Dante, Meister Eckhart, Chaucer, Nietzsche, Cioran, Meher Baba - this volume interrogates the nature and meaning of the will, along seven modes: spontaneity, potentiality, sorrow, matter, vision, eros, and sacrifice. These multiple lines of inquiry are finally presented to coalesce around one fundamental point of agreement: the will says yes, yet only a will that knows how to say no to itself, entering the silence of its own darkness, will ever be free.

The aim of this book is to promote the thesis that myth may illuminate archaeology and that on occasion archaeology may shed light on myth. Medieval Irish literature is rich in mythic themes and some of these are used as a starting point. Some myths are of great antiquity and some were invented by contemporary authors. It is a challenging source, first explored in the author's earlier work Archaeology and Celtic Myth and this work will elaborate on some of the themes pursued there and introduce some new ones. Combining literary and archaeological evidence chapters deal with the construction of the past, illustrating how the Irish medieval world invented aspects of the past; the abuses of myth presented in later literature; the evidence for the survival of pagan beliefs and practices well into medieval times in Ireland; evidence to illustrate the key elements of the institution of sacral kingship, a consideration of sacred trees; mythology of the underworld and its archaeological expressions and the equine aspects of the myths attached to the Irish goddess Macha (linked to Navan Fort) and her Welsh counterpart Rhiannon. John Waddell brings a lifetimes experience of studying Irish history, Bronze Age archaeology and Celtic mythology in this personal and lively exploration of mythology and its archaeological expression.

Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary continue to intrigue and fascinate us to this day. Their appearances in the Bible are brief, piquing our curiosity and compelling speculation about the unknown years of their lives. This volume contains modern translations of plays performed during the late Middle Ages in England about the lives of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene. These plays provide a link between canonical Scripture, apocryphal and gnostic materials from the first centuries of Christianity that survived secreted or in oral tradition, legendary materials that developed over the ensuing centuries, and contemporary medieval religious belief and practices. Materials from the N-Town Mary and other plays contain episodes about the childhood of the Virgin, her betrothal and marriage to Joseph, and her time after the death of Christ. The Digby Mary Magdalene begins with an account of the death of Mary Magdalene’s father, her subsequent fall into promiscuity, her redemption, her journey to convert Marseille and thus christianize France, her later years as a hermit and her death. These plays illustrate one way in which Biblical materials were available to lay people before the printing of the Bible. Reading these plays of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene from the late Middle Ages increases our understanding of the history of the Marian and Magdalene traditions practiced in earlier centuries, as well as our understanding of what these women have come to represent today, shedding light on how their images have shaped the roles for women in the Church.

The popular romances of medieval England are fantasy stories of love at first sight; brave knights seeking adventure; evil stewards; passionate, lusty women; hand-to-hand combat; angry dragons; and miracles. They are not only fun but indicate a great deal about the ideals and values of the society they were written in. Yet the genre of Middle English romance has only recently begun to attain critical respectability, dismissed as "vayn carpynge" in its own age and generally treated by twentieth-century critics as a junk-food form of medieval literature. Chaucer's Tale of Sir Thopas has been assumed to be a satire of the romances' clichéd formulas and unskilled authors. But the romances evidently enjoyed popularity among all English classes, and the genre itself continued to flourish and evolve down to present-day novels and movies. Whatever Chaucer and his contemporaries thought of romances, they would have needed some personal familiarity with the stories and texts for comic tales such as Sir Thopas to be understood. A century ago, Beowulf faced the same problem that the Middle English romances still face: no modern translations were published because few had heard of the poem- because there were no modern translations published. Where the romances have been printed, they have normally been reproduced as critical editions in their original language, or translated into heavily abridged children's versions, but few have been published as scholarly close line translations with notes. This book is an attempt to remedy this by making some of these romances available to the student or lay reader who lacks specialized knowledge of Middle English, with the hope that a clearer understanding of the poems will encourage not only enjoyment but also further study.

What awaits us beyond the grave is perhaps the fundamental human mystery. Visionary accounts of the afterlife are attested long before the Common Era, and loomed large in the imaginative universe of early Christianity. The medieval Irish inherited and further transformed this tradition, producing vivid eschatological narratives which had a profound impact throughout Europe as well as being works of remarkable literary and spiritual power in their own right. Under the headings ‘Soul and Body’, ‘The Seven Heavens’, ‘The Next World’, and ‘The Judgement and its Signs’, this book presents critical editions, with translation and commentary, of 26 eschatological texts from the Old, Middle, and Early Modern Irish periods, together with related material in Latin and Old English. Some of these works are here edited for the first time. Extended essays survey Irish eschatological literature a whole, and place it in its wider context; and the volume concludes with a comprehensive handlist of Irish eschatological compositions. This book consists of two volumes.

Viking Language 2: The Old Norse Reader (the 2nd book in the Viking Language Series) immerses the learner in Old Norse and Icelandic. Readings include a wealth of Old Norse myths, legends, complete Icelandic sagas, poems of the Scandinavian gods, runic inscriptions. There is a large vocabulary and a full reference grammar. Selections from Old Norse and rune texts range from the doom of the gods at the final battle Ragnarok to descriptions of the dwarves’ gold and the ring that inspired Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Wagner’s Ring Cycle, and a host of modern fantasy.

Viking Language 1: Learn Old Norse, Runes, and Icelandic Sagas (the first book in the Viking Language Series) is a new introduction to Old Norse and Icelandic. The beginner has everything in one book: Graded lessons, reading passages, vocabulary, grammar exercises, and pronunciation. A full complement of maps, runic inscriptions and culture sections explore the civilization, legends, and myths of the Vikings. The lessons follow an innovative word frequency strategy, a method that speeds learning. Because the grammar of Modern Icelandic has changed so little from Old Norse, the learner is well on the way to mastering Modern Icelandic.

This guide to the unique theatrical venues of London, from 1567, when the first playhouse was built, to 1642, when Cromwell closed them down, sets out the rich dramatic history of this period in relation to the latest exciting archaeological evidence. The book also details the people involved - the builders, actors, playwrights and audiences - what they wore and what they ate, where they drank, where they fought, where they lived and died. There are theatrical quotes and jokes, and illustrations old and new, while a series of walks explores different areas of today's London, where glimpses of Shakespeare's London can still be caught.

The Sturlunga Saga is a collection of secular contemporary literature of historical events in the 11th and 12th century. The Sturlunga Saga has mainly been used as a source in historical research. This book, however, emphasises the expression of secular contemporary stories as a whole as interactions regarding the events they portray without questioning the truthfulness of the storytelling. The common opinion is that it is necessary to validate the narrative study of the Sturlunga Saga before it is used as a source. Its validity as a source is not merely based on what it portrays, but is based also on its narrative. Icelandic text,

This pioneering work shows how Celtic cultures understood the place of human beings in their natural environment in ways fundamentally different from our own. Benozzo explores the unique unfolding of landscapes in early Irish and Welsh texts, including Tain Bo Cuailgne, The Voyage of Bran, the Gododdin and the mythological Taliesin poem on the Battle of the Trees.

A collection of 10 essays on Early Welsh. Contents: The etymology of Welsh chwith and the semantics and morphology of PIE *k(w)sweibh- ( Peter Schrijver ); Rowynniauc , Rhufoniog : the orthography and phonology of /m/ in Early Welsh ( Paul Russell ); Old English literacy and the provenance of Welsh y ( Peter Kitson ); Two developments in medieval literary Welsh and their implications for dating texts ( Simon Rodway ); The structure and typology of prepositional relative clauses in Early Welsh ( Graham Isaac ); The dry point glosses in Oxoniensis Posterior ( Alexander Falileyev and Paul Russell ); The Old Welsh glosses on Weights and Measures ( Pierre-Yves Lambert ); Marwnad Cunedda a diwedd y Brydain Rufeinig ( John T Koch ); Are there elements of non-standard language in the work of the Gogynfeirdd? ( Peter Busse ); The Progressive in Ystorya Bown de Hamtwn ( Erich Poppe ).

An exploration of the links between the languages, cultures and traditions of the Celtic peoples of Ireland and Britain through an analysis of literary sources, place or people names and the Gaelic language. Twenty-six English, Gaelic or French essays, include extracts from Celtic texts, accompanied by detailed commentaries, and comparisons between these three main areas of influence.

Girolamo Fracastoro (?1478-1553) was a doctor and scientist, as well as a poet. He was born in the northern Italian city of Verona, into a prominent local family. Verona is at one of the crossroads of Europe, and although Fracastoro's whole life was spent in that vicinity, he maintained a wide circle of friends and correspondents, keeping up-to-date with what was going on elsewhere. Two cataclysmic events - the European voyages to the New World, and the sudden appearance and rapid spread of syphilis - are the combined themes of his greatest literary work. The Syphilis , dedicated to Pietro Bembo, became one of the most celebrated poems of the Renaissance. Soon after its publication (in 1530) Fracastoro was hailed as a major Latin poet, an equal of Virgil. In the first two books of Syphilis Fracastoro not only describes in vivid terms the symptoms and known cures for syphilis, but also presents for the first time his theory of 'contagion', a major breakthrough towards modern understanding of disease. He was later to write a scientific prose treatise De Contagione. The third and final book of the Syphilis gives a highly mythical narrative of the landing of Columbus in the New World. His reason for including this American material was not, as we might suppose, that syphilis was brought from the Americas to Europe, but rather that the New World provided Europe with one of the more useful remedies for syphilis, an extract from a native American wood, guaiacum. In spite of its poetic mode, Fracastoro's account draws in some detail on contemporary sources for the European discovery of the New World, as Eatough's notes show. This edition offers a 35-page introduction, text with facing English translation, notes elucidating literary, mythical, geographical and botanical topics, and a word-index of the poem.

The International Courtly Literature Society was founded in 1973 to foster the study of all aspects of courtly literature - an interest not limited to European medievalists, although they provide one of the society's main focuses. The ICLS holds triennial international conferences, the third in Liverpool, England in 1980. Professor Glyn Burgess has edited a volume containing about one-third of the papers presented there. He opens it with the three plenary speakers, Charles Muscatine, Alan Deyermond, and John Benton, who illuminate conflicting aspects of life and literature held in tension in the productions of medieval court poets. The remaining 29 contributions represent the principal national literatures discussed at the Congress - English, French, German, Provencal and Spanish - and offer a wide variety of perspectives and approaches to courtly literature, including comparisons between literary and artistic artefacts.