This paper investigates code-switching and script-switching in medieval documents from the Cairo Geniza, written in Judaeo-Arabic (Arabic in Hebrew script), Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic. Legal documents regularly show a macaronic style of Judaeo-Arabic, Aramaic and Hebrew, while in letters code-switching from Judaeo-Arabic to Hebrew is tied in with…

This current study proposes a comparative method of teaching authorial style, using four versions of "Exemplo XI," an often-anthologized tale about the "mago" of Toledo, Don Illán, from the "Conde Lucanor," a series of interlinked tales by the early fourteenth-century author Don Juan Manuel. Teaching a medieval text…

Based on a three-year collaboration with elementary school instructors, this paper discusses a creative approach to introducing younger students to the historical aspects and unique structure of the medieval book as a physical object. Through incremental activities, students learn to contextualize primary sources in both original and digital…

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 study examines the depictions of the Flemish in Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales", Langland's "Piers Plowman", several historical chronicles including The Brut continuations, poetic works such as "The Libelle of Englysh Polycye", additional short poems dealing directly with events of the Hundred Years' War, and…

Begun as an investigation of the linguistic and paleographic evidence on the Old Saxon Leipzig "Heliand" fragment, the dissertation encompasses three analyses spanning over a millennium of that manuscript's existence. First, a direct analysis clarifies errors in the published transcription (4.2). The corrections result from digital…

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.…