In medieval society, gestures and speaking looks played an even more important part in public and private exchanges than they do today. Gestures meant more than words, for example, in ceremonies of homage and fealty. In this, the first study of its kind in English, John Burrow examines the role of non-verbal communication in a wide range of narrative texts, including Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, the anonymous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Malory's Morte D'arthur, the romances of Chrétien de Troyes, the Prose Lancelot, Boccaccio's Il Filostrato, and Dante's Commedia. Burrow argues that since non-verbal signs are in general less subject to change than words, many of the behaviours recorded in these texts, such as pointing and amorous gazing, are familiar in themselves; yet many prove easy to misread, either because they are no longer common, like bowing, or because their use has changed, like winking.

Gestures and looks played an even more important role in public and private exchanges of medieval society, than they do today. Gestures meant more than words, for example, in ceremonies of homage and fealty. In this compelling study, medievalist Burrow examines the role of non-verbal communication in a range of narrative texts, including Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, the anonymous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Malory's Morte D'arthur, the romances of Chrétien de Troyes, the prose Lancelot, Boccaccio's Il Filostrato, and Dante's Commedia.

In the study of Judaism, the Zohar has captivated the minds of interpreters for over seven centuries, and continues to entrance readers in contemporary times. Yet despite these centuries of study, very little attention has been devoted to the literary dimensions of the text, or to formal appreciation of its status as one of the great works of religious literature. The Art of Mystical Narrative offers a critical approach to the zoharic story, seeking to explore the interplay between fictional discourse and mystical exegesis. Eitan Fishbane argues that the narrative must be understood first and foremost as a work of the fictional imagination, a representation of a world and reality invented by the thirteenth-century authors of the text. He claims that the text functions as a kind of dramatic literature, one in which the power of revealing mystical secrets is demonstrated and performed for the reading audience. The Art of Mystical Narrative offers a fresh, interdisciplinary perspective on the Zohar and on the intersections of literary and religious studies.

An original study of the political, religious and literary uses of representations of the holy city in the fourteenth century.

This book offers fresh insights into the plethora of medieval bodies and the multiple perspectives that can be assumed in their discussion. The ten essays by internationally renowned scholars and young academics encompass diverse approaches to the body such as the function of gestures, the gendered gaze, the body’s spatial and geographical positioning, the (dis)integrity of the body or the connection between linguistic uses of ‘body’ and physical bodies. While most of the contributions of this collection are in the field of medieval English literature, they underline the value of interdisciplinary approaches which connect them with neighbouring disciplines such as modern literature and arts, history, theology and gender studies. Contributors: Katharina Berger-Meister, Guillemette Bolens, Leslie Dunton-Downer, Laurie Finke, Angelina Keller, Andy Kelly, Fabienne Michelet, R. Allen Shoaf, Lotta Sigurdsson, and Paul Taylor.

Behaving Badly in Early and Medieval China presents a rogues’ gallery of treacherous regicides, impious monks, cutthroat underlings, ill-bred offspring, and disloyal officials. It plumbs the dark matter of the human condition, placing front and center transgressive individuals and groups traditionally demonized by Confucian annalists and largely shunned by modern scholars. The work endeavors to apprehend the actions and motivations of these men and women, whose conduct deviated from normative social, cultural, and religious expectations. Early chapters examine how core Confucian bonds such as those between parents and children, and ruler and minister, were compromised, even severed. The living did not always reverently pay homage to the dead, children did not honor their parents with due filiality, a decorous distance was not necessarily observed between sons and stepmothers, and subjects often pursued their own interests before those of the ruler or the state. The elasticity of ritual and social norms is explored: Chapters on brazen Eastern Han (25–220) mourners and deviant calligraphers, audacious falconers, volatile Tang (618–907) Buddhist monks, and drunken Song (960–1279) literati reveal social norms treated not as universal truths but as debated questions of taste wherein political and social expedience both determined and highlighted individual roles within larger social structures and defined what was and was not aberrant. A Confucian predilection to “valorize [the] civil and disparage the martial” and Buddhist proscriptions on killing led literati and monks alike to condemn the cruelty and chaos of war. The book scrutinizes cultural attitudes toward military action and warfare, including those surrounding the bloody and capricious world of the Zuozhuan (Chronicle of Zuo), the relentless violence of the Five Dynasties and Ten States periods (907–979), and the exploits of Tang warrior priests—a series of studies that complicates the rhetoric by situating it within the turbulent realities of the times. By the end of this volume, readers will come away with the understanding that behaving badly in early and medieval China was not about morality but perspective, politics, and power.