Educators employed in devoutly religious institutions often teach students who view even their secular higher education through a uniquely religious lens. Based on his own experiences teaching psychological science at a Jewish university, the author suggests enhancing student interest and enthusiasm by wedding secular curricula with religious…

The proposals for the revised National Curriculum in English suggest limiting the pre-twentieth century poetry that GCSE pupils read to "representative Romantic poetry" (Department for Education [DFE], 2013, p. 4). This paper argues that poetry of the early modern period is challenging and enriching study for adolescent pupils and that…

This article examines adaptations in their capacity of preserving literary heritage. It describes how the Middle Dutch beast epic "Reynard the Fox" lost its position in literature for adults and became part of a literary heritage that was no longer read but only studied for its historical value. Versions for children kept the story…

Recent decades have produced millions of medieval re-enactors, role players, and fantasy buffs -- and billions of dollars for the industries that fuel them. However, writes Gravois, academic medievalists have viewed this engorged popular interest not as an embarrassment of riches, but as simply embarrassment. Yet those same re-enactors, role…

This article discusses students' perceptions of the impact of technology integration in an interdisciplinary medieval English literature and multimedia course on developing higher-order thinking skills and team-building skills. The results indicate that undergraduate students in this course perceived generally strong support for development of…

Examines the four existential realities of isolation, meaninglessness, death, and freedom as a framework for understanding Dante's "Divine Comedy." Argues that studying this text and its metaphors offers an enriched understanding of the dilemmas of human existence which can refine the understanding of the therapeutic relationship.…

Recognizing that many of us teach the medieval English women mystics Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich in survey courses, this essay attempts to put these writers in context for teachers who may have only a passing familiarity with the period. Focusing on passages of their writings found in the Longman and Norton anthologies of British…

Traces the history of the labyrinth poem from the time of Augustus Caesar. (FL)

Discusses the gruesome images of death occurring in medieval art and letters. Suggests that the images are a form of symbolism based on body metaphors. By means of decomposing bodies, artists and poets symbolized the disintegration of medieval institutions and the transition to the early modern period in Europe. (JAC)

Identifies and discusses altruism as a basic trait of human character and behavior and explores its possible implications for the dying person. Observable in hospitals and literary-aesthetic representations, altruism is a part of the infinite variety of humanity's perceptions, activities, and experiences that make up the mosaic of life and death.…

Explores production ideas for plays other than works by Shakespeare, including medieval plays such as the "Wakefield Noah" by the Wakefield Master. Lists some questions to consider when deciding to perform a medieval play. (PA)

Analyzes Grendel ("Beowulf"), the Green Knight ("Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"), and the Pardoner ("The Canterbury Tales"). Notes that they are all "queer" characters in that they are not typical men of the time and they all pose a challenge or threat to normative homosocial desire. Suggests that…

Presents an approach for teaching Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale" (from "The Canterbury Tales"). Recommends several reference texts related to the "The Canterbury Tales" and medieval literature in general. (MM)

Analysis of aspects of critical thinking in the work of two Persian poets of the eleventh and fourteenth centuries illustrates the educative role of poetry. Its approach to symbolization fosters creativity and develops critical sensibility. (SK)

Reveals the continued importance of medieval rhetorical pedagogy throughout the high Middle Ages and early Renaissance by exploring the fifteenth-century popularity, uses of, and references to Geoffrey of Vinsauf's "Poetria nova" (a thirteenth-century verse treatise on the composition of poetry according to rhetorical principles). (SR)