Anglo-Norman literature and culture
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Recent papers in Anglo-Norman literature and culture
This paper examines William of Malmesbury's (c.1090—c.1142) detailed description of ancient Roman remains at Carlisle in northern England. This remarkable passage features in his 'Gesta pontificum Anglorum' (Book III ch. 99) and has been... more
Medieval languages existed in a state of constant contact and interaction with other languages. In this project, I argue that thirteenth- and fourteenth- century English trilingual manuscripts show the coalescing of distinctive approaches... more
This is a complete copy of my doctoral dissertation, completed in 1995 and defended in 1996, and supervised by Jonathan J. G. Alexander. Thanks to all of you who have expressed an interest in it. Since 1996 it has been available via UMI... more
Studies of Irish surnames and by-names have been based on the assumption that the language used in creating the surname represented the ethnic background of those who used it. This examination of records from 13th and 14th C Limerick... more
Offprints of most of my published work can be found at my website: http://www.bruceobrien.org
Consider the difference between text and speech. Of these, only text occupies material space. Text expresses as a durable manifestation of language and speech and must exist in a physical form. Speech may be transformed into text through... more
La Terre des Sarazins (LTS), a little-known memento of the Fifth Crusade, is identified as a letter to Pope Innocent III by an unnamed patriarch of Jerusalem. The report describes the Ayyubid hierarchy, including also a portrayal of the... more
This paper was published in 2011 as part of a Festschrift for the British scholar, Henrietta Leyser. It surveys the corpus of Latin, Anglo-Norman, and early Middle English texts on women's medicine in England up through the 14th... more
The text edited here is an Anglo-Norman version of the Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem, or Lettre d’Alexandre sur les merveilles de l’Inde. The Lettre is a fictional epistle attributed to Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE), when... more
This document is a transcription of the folio 5 of the Holkham Bible, an illustrated collection of biblical and apocryphal stories in Norman French. Specific anglo-norman words are linked to their Anglo-Norman Dictionary entries, and a... more
An examination of the Anglo-Norman Prose 'Brut' tradition and the difficulties in working it out properly.
This article examines the Life of a twelfth-century English holy woman, Christina of Markyate – particularly its account of a vision that she had in which she was crowned in the likeness of a bishop’s miter – within the context of... more
Present research has been carried out within the framework of comparative historical linguistics an semantic reconstruction. Germanic trade vocabulary found in Gothic and Anglo-Saxon translations of the Bible is regarded as the object... more
Il presente volume, partendo dal racconto delle origini storiche dei Normanni e degli Anglosassoni, ripercorre le varie tappe che portarono alla battaglia di Hastings del 14 ottobre 1066 e alla storica vittoria di Guglielmo, potente Duca... more
This article also is available online via ProjectMuse at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/738211 and on Penn Scholarly Commons.
A paper presented at the Eleventh International Conference on Middle English (ICOME XI), Florence, 5-8 February 2019.
In this text is researched the relation between the Brunanburh poem that appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles under the year 937 and Völuspá the Icelandic poem of the Prophecy. The Brunanburh poem describes the Battle of Brunanburh... more
[Now available through open access from Speculum: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1017/S0038713415002316] Among those witnesses of John Gower's works that are known to have been produced during his lifetime, the Trentham... more
Ely, Cambridgeshire, is known to tourists as an incredible city steeped in myth and legend and dominated by the Norman Cathedral, a masterpiece of medieval architecture. There have been many popular books written about the Isle, but in... more
In this article I will consider the influence of female readers of Virgil‟s Aeneid on two medieval adaptations of Virgil‟s text, namely, the C11th Latin Encomium Emmae Reginae, and the C12th Old French Roman d’Enéas. In these two texts... more
The Gesta Stephani chronicles the turbulent reign of King Stephen (1135-1154), the last of the Norman kings. Although it is anonymously written and an incomplete manuscript, it provides important insight into the chaos and turmoil that... more
In the writings of Norman and Anglo-Norman authors of the twelfth century, the pre-Conquest English aristocracy are often depicted as boisterous drunkards, and their table manners are pictured as unfit for a civilized people. On the other... more
On the meaning of the Pantokrator in the apse of the Cathedral of Cefalù, where the King (Roger II) had his seat below the Pantokrator. A similar situation is found in San Marco in Venice where the Doge had his seat in the choir, opposite... more
'Dopo Ovidio.
Aspetti della ricezione ovidiana fra letteratura e iconografia'
organizzazione: Franca Ela Consolino, Stefania Filosini
UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DELL’AQUILA
DIPARTIMENTO DI SCIENZE UMANE
7-8 MAGGIO 2019
AULA 4 A
Aspetti della ricezione ovidiana fra letteratura e iconografia'
organizzazione: Franca Ela Consolino, Stefania Filosini
UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DELL’AQUILA
DIPARTIMENTO DI SCIENZE UMANE
7-8 MAGGIO 2019
AULA 4 A
Conférence de clôture de « France-Angleterre 700-1200 : manuscrits médiévaux de la Bibliothèque nationale de France et de la British Library, un programme de la Fondation Polonsky ». 21-23 novembre 2018 Auditorium Colbert (2 rue... more
Traduzione in italiano con testo latino a fronte della Topographia Hibernica di Giraldo Cambrense, completato da note storiche e introduzione (pp. 7-48). Original text in Latin with parallel Italian translation; introduction (pp. 7-48)... more
Deuxième Congrès de l'Association pour les Études nordiques, 14-16 juin 2017 - Université de Caen Normandie Résumé : Les sagas islandaises du XIIIe siècle rapportent un témoignage surprenant au sujet de Mathilde, l’épouse du duc de... more
The article analyzes the circulation of classical historical works (Caesar, Sallust, Suetonius, Joseph Flavius, Justin, Eutropius, etc.) in Anglo-Norman and early Angevin England.
The article views Marie within the frame of insular history in order to argue that in seeking to preserve the Celtic stories of the Lais, Marie was enacting a form of ‘salvage anthropology,’ the salvage of cultural materials under threat... more
Muscio’s Gynecology was a work on women’s medicine written in North Africa probably some time in the fifth or sixth century. Why it came to play such an important role in the development of gynecology and obstetrics in England is a... more
(Note that the PDF includes the first pages only.) This essay explores how female characters in historical literature written in high to late medieval England shape land claims, political history, and genealogy through their acts of... more
In this text we want to show how the Viking merchant ship Knarr was displayed as a symbol of hope, freedom and independence as well as a transporter of the dead on their last trip to the other world. This can be seen in old Icelandic and... more
In this text we want to focus attention to the possible sites for the Battle of Brunanburh by paying extra attention to the two primary sources known for the battle. We focus on two known poems that describe the events in detail; that is... more
This chapter charts the social evolution of the Anglo-Norman fortune-telling game "Ragemon le Bon" and examines how it operated as a participative, ludic space for gentry players in England.