Annette Harder

G. J. Reinink

Alasdair A. MacDonald

The present volume contains twelve new essays on didactic verse, with a broad time-sweep ranging from the most ancient literature (Sumeria) through to the early-modern age (seventeenth-century England). Considered collectively, the contents illustrate the transmission of this important literary kind from Ancient to Modern times, and from east to west, from south to north. The Romantic age led to the lyric being seen as the dominant poetical mode, and today it has become almost axiomatic to view the chief function of poetry as the articulation of the thoughts and emotions of the individual; a concomitant assumption is that the essential quality of poetry is the aesthetic. However, in other cultures, and in earlier times, things were very different, and the didactic was long accorded a secure place as one of several prominent literary modes. While it is difficult to give a precise definition of the didactic, it may be said to be characteristically concerned with knowledge and wisdom, where the latter term inclines toward moral and religious instruction, and the former toward information both practical and encyclopaedic. The present contributions deal with the functioning of didactic verse in such widely diverse areas as: education in school; mnemotechnics; rhetoric, style and composition; farming; grammar; the natural world; cultural identity; liturgy and worship; aetiology; philosophy; politics; intertextuality; man as microcosm; the training of the soul; gender awareness. Truly, the classroom presided over by Calliope, the chief of muses, is no arid intellectual forcing-house but rather a place where the resources of rhetoric, learning and imagination are felicitously combined in the training of the individual mind and the betterment of society in general.

Studies in Didactic Poetry from Antiquity to the Renaissance

Calliope's Classroom

J. Craig McDonald

The Contemplacioun of Synnaris of William Touris is a poem (c.1494) for Holy Week. Though intended for James IV of Scotland, the earliest surviving witness is an English print of 1499; post-Reformation, it re-emerged both in Scotland and England.

Late-medieval Advice to a Prince

William Touris OFM, The Contemplacioun of Synnaris

Hendrik Jan Willem Drijvers

"Centres of Learning" deals with the relation between learning and the locations in which that learning is carried out. It is the editors' belief that the character (and, in part, the content) of a particular aspect of learning is determined - or at least influenced - by the circumstances in which the learning process takes place. The contributions in this book deal with various aspects of learning, in a broad historical and geographical perspective, which ranges from Ancient Babylon, via classical Greece and Rome, and the Middle East (both Christian and Islamic), through to the Latin and vernacular cultures of the Christian West in the Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance.

Learning and Location in Pre-Modern Europe and the Near East

Centres of Learning

Luuk A. J. R. Houwen

L. A. J. R. Houwen

Sally Mapstone

The essays in this collection share an overall purpose : they aim to shed new light on Scottish culture during the century and a half (1475-1625) which saw the full emergence of Scotland as a player on the European political and cultural stages. Throughout the book, awareness of the larger European background is considered an essential element in the proper appraisal of the productions of Scottish culture. Topics discussed include : the Scottish reception of, and participation in, general humanist learning; the impact of Burgundian patterns of late-medieval piety; international diplomacy; courtly culture under Kings James III, IV, V and VI, and Mary Stuart; poetry and politics; law; libraries; and historiography. The contributions in this volume offer innovative contextualisations and interpretations of many canonical works of Scottish culture; at the same time they also seek to expand that canon by examining several less familiar artistic productions. All those interested in the cultural changes inherent in the transition from the late-medieval to the early modern periods, and in the Northern manifestations of the European Renaissance, will find much of interest in this book. In the words of R.L. Stevenson, the cultural achievement of Scotland during this period may be described as constituting a metaphoric "palace in the wild".

Essays on Vernacular Culture and Humanism in Late-medieval and Renaissance Scotland

A Palace in the Wild

Alasdair A. MacDonald

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