Alastair Minnis
Biographic Data
| ID | 1067168 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alastair Minnis |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alastair |
| FAMILY NAME | Minnis |
| SIGNATURE | MINNIS A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Yale University |
| ORCID | 0009-0008-9699-7453 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 24 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 22 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1979 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Engaging with Chaucer
Scholastic Literary Theory
Scholastic intentionalism was a complicated and hardly consistent affair. Theologians sought security of meaning in the principle that a biblical author's intention could be found in the literal sense of his text. But the ultimate author of scripture, God, could have inscribed truths that transcended the intentions of inspired but merely human authors. Perhaps a text's intention was not curtailed by the temporal and historical circumstances of it…
Invention and Authorship in Medieval England
Proto-Surgery, Resurrection, and Race
In one of the most challenging of all medieval miracles, a leg transplant operation is performed by the ‘surgeon saints’ Cosmas and Damian, who return from the afterlife to remove a devotee’s cancerous leg and replace it with one taken from a dead Ethiopian. In recent years, ‘medical humanists’ were the first to express substantial interest in the narrative, finding here a case of ‘proto-surgery’. Subsequently it has featured in investigation of …
The Restoration of All Things
On July 1, 1555, John Bradford was burned at Smithfield, one of the Protestant divines executed during the reign of Mary Tudor. Shortly before his death he wrote a treatise entitled The Restoration of All Things to counsel a devout woman of his circle. This expounds Romans 8:21–22, where “the creature” is said to be groaning in pain, awaiting release from the bondage of corruption. Here Bradford follows the innovative exegesis of the exiled Stras…
The Cambridge Introduction to Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer is the best-known and most widely read of all medieval British writers, famous for his scurrilous humour and biting satire against the vices and absurdities of his age. Yet he was also a poet of passionate love, sensitive to issues of gender and sexual difference, fascinated by the ideological differences between the pagan past and the Christian present, and a man of science, knowledgeable in astronomy, astrology and alchemy. Thi…
Cambridge Introduction to Chaucer
The Medieval Bible as Literature
Hugh Magennis
Medieval Holy Women in the Christian Tradition c.1100-c.1500
Medieval Holy Women in the Christian Tradition offers the first wide-ranging study of the remarkable women who contributed to the efflorescence of female piety and visionary experience in Europe between 1100 and 1500. This volume offers essays by prominent scholars in the field which extend the boundaries of our previous knowledge and understanding of medieval holy women. While some essays provide new perspectives on the familiar names of the uno…
Tobits Dog And The Dangers Of Literalism
During the two centuries following the death of St Francis, the order he had founded produced a remarkable number of Bible commentators of the highest rank. Some of Lyre's successors, however, have been neglected or undervalued in recent scholarship - not least the Oxford Franciscan who is the subject of this chapter, William Woodford (c. 1330-c. 1397). The acuity of Woodford's attack on John Wyclif's literalistic theory of exegesis marks him as …
Text, Image, Interpretation
Reclaiming the Pardoners
Research Article| May 01 2003 Reclaiming the Pardoners Alastair Minnis Alastair Minnis Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (2003) 33 (2): 311–334. https://doi.org/10.1215/10829636-33-2-311 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Alastair Minnis; Reclaiming the Pardoners. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 1 May 2003; 33 (2): 311–334. doi…
Parler proprement
This chapter analyses Jean de Meun's pronouncements on proper speech and the relationship of words and deeds in his part of the poem Roman de la Rose, with special reference to Raison's infamous claim that she has the right to name the male genitalia in the plainest of terms. It draws on language theory relating to the human institution of language and the characteristics of figurative or ‘improper’ speech, meaning speech which is not to be under…
Introduction
This book examines the debate over the status of the Roman de la Rose by Jean de Meun as a poem about love. De Meun was perceived as a ‘Medieval Ovid’ by his supporters and defenders alike. For his defenders the comparison with Ovid was a crucial means of authorising the Rose; for his attackers it was a means of destroying any claim to authority which the poem might conceivably have. The book addresses Ovid's ambiguous textual authority, first by…
Theorizing the Rose
Pruning the Rose
Lifting the Veil
In his Anticlaudianus and De planctu naturae, Alan of Lille put integumental theory into literary practice. This chapter examines Alan's De planctu naturae and Jean de Meun's portion of the Roman de la Rose in terms of style. Alan's ornate and richly artificial modus loquendi, with its dazzling rhetoric, convoluted allegory, and heavy dependence on classical myth and grammatical metaphors, distances the reader from empirical reality and temporali…
Signe d’estre malles
Academic Prologues to Ovid and the Vernacular Art of Love
Ovid was the most ambivalent of all the grammatical auctores — the expert on both the art of love and its rejection, an apparent misogynist yet also a champion of legal, married love, an acclaimed mythographer as well as the ancient ‘master of love’. These paradoxes afforded at once a challenge and an opportunity to medieval scholars, translators, and imitators of the ancient poet. This chapter looks at three French translations of Ovid's ‘art of…
Magister Amoris
The Roman de la Rose by Jean de Meun was a major bestseller, largely due to its robust treatment of ‘natural’ sexuality. This book concentrates on the ways in which de Meun, in imitation of Ovid, assumed the mock-magisterium (or mastership) of love. From Latin texts and literary theory, de Meun derived many hermeneutic rationales and generic categorisations, without allowing any one to dominate. The book considers allegorical versus literalistic …
"The Latin Verses in the "Confessio Amantis
The Ethical Poetic of the Later Middle Ages
Literary Theory in Discussions of Formae Tractandi by Medieval Theologians
A RISTOTELIAN EPISTEMOLOGY, as interpreted in the thirteenth century, gave the human faculties and the human perception a new dignity. The scriptural exegetes of that period afforded the of Scripture, the sensus litteralis (literal sense), a corresponding dignity. As Miss Smalley says: Transferring his view of body and soul to 'letter and spirit', the Aristotelian would perceive the 'spirit' of Scripture as something not hidden behind or added on…
Magister Amoris
The Roman de la Rose by Jean de Meun was a major bestseller, largely due to its robust treatment of ‘natural’ sexuality. This book concentrates on the ways in which de Meun, in imitation of Ovid, assumed the mock-magisterium (or mastership) of love. From Latin texts and literary theory, de Meun derived many hermeneutic rationales and generic categorisations, without allowing any one to dominate. The book considers allegorical versus literalistic …
Reclaiming the Pardoners
Research Article| May 01 2003 Reclaiming the Pardoners Alastair Minnis Alastair Minnis Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (2003) 33 (2): 311–334. https://doi.org/10.1215/10829636-33-2-311 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Alastair Minnis; Reclaiming the Pardoners. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 1 May 2003; 33 (2): 311–334. doi…
Literary Theory in Discussions of Formae Tractandi by Medieval Theologians
A RISTOTELIAN EPISTEMOLOGY, as interpreted in the thirteenth century, gave the human faculties and the human perception a new dignity. The scriptural exegetes of that period afforded the of Scripture, the sensus litteralis (literal sense), a corresponding dignity. As Miss Smalley says: Transferring his view of body and soul to 'letter and spirit', the Aristotelian would perceive the 'spirit' of Scripture as something not hidden behind or added on…
The Ethical Poetic of the Later Middle Ages
"The Latin Verses in the "Confessio Amantis
Parler proprement
This chapter analyses Jean de Meun's pronouncements on proper speech and the relationship of words and deeds in his part of the poem Roman de la Rose, with special reference to Raison's infamous claim that she has the right to name the male genitalia in the plainest of terms. It draws on language theory relating to the human institution of language and the characteristics of figurative or ‘improper’ speech, meaning speech which is not to be under…
Introduction
This book examines the debate over the status of the Roman de la Rose by Jean de Meun as a poem about love. De Meun was perceived as a ‘Medieval Ovid’ by his supporters and defenders alike. For his defenders the comparison with Ovid was a crucial means of authorising the Rose; for his attackers it was a means of destroying any claim to authority which the poem might conceivably have. The book addresses Ovid's ambiguous textual authority, first by…
Theorizing the Rose
Pruning the Rose
Lifting the Veil
In his Anticlaudianus and De planctu naturae, Alan of Lille put integumental theory into literary practice. This chapter examines Alan's De planctu naturae and Jean de Meun's portion of the Roman de la Rose in terms of style. Alan's ornate and richly artificial modus loquendi, with its dazzling rhetoric, convoluted allegory, and heavy dependence on classical myth and grammatical metaphors, distances the reader from empirical reality and temporali…
Signe d’estre malles
Academic Prologues to Ovid and the Vernacular Art of Love
Ovid was the most ambivalent of all the grammatical auctores — the expert on both the art of love and its rejection, an apparent misogynist yet also a champion of legal, married love, an acclaimed mythographer as well as the ancient ‘master of love’. These paradoxes afforded at once a challenge and an opportunity to medieval scholars, translators, and imitators of the ancient poet. This chapter looks at three French translations of Ovid's ‘art of…
Magister Amoris
The Roman de la Rose by Jean de Meun was a major bestseller, largely due to its robust treatment of ‘natural’ sexuality. This book concentrates on the ways in which de Meun, in imitation of Ovid, assumed the mock-magisterium (or mastership) of love. From Latin texts and literary theory, de Meun derived many hermeneutic rationales and generic categorisations, without allowing any one to dominate. The book considers allegorical versus literalistic …
Reclaiming the Pardoners
Research Article| May 01 2003 Reclaiming the Pardoners Alastair Minnis Alastair Minnis Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (2003) 33 (2): 311–334. https://doi.org/10.1215/10829636-33-2-311 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Alastair Minnis; Reclaiming the Pardoners. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 1 May 2003; 33 (2): 311–334. doi…
Text, Image, Interpretation
Tobits Dog And The Dangers Of Literalism
During the two centuries following the death of St Francis, the order he had founded produced a remarkable number of Bible commentators of the highest rank. Some of Lyre's successors, however, have been neglected or undervalued in recent scholarship - not least the Oxford Franciscan who is the subject of this chapter, William Woodford (c. 1330-c. 1397). The acuity of Woodford's attack on John Wyclif's literalistic theory of exegesis marks him as …
Medieval Holy Women in the Christian Tradition c.1100-c.1500
Medieval Holy Women in the Christian Tradition offers the first wide-ranging study of the remarkable women who contributed to the efflorescence of female piety and visionary experience in Europe between 1100 and 1500. This volume offers essays by prominent scholars in the field which extend the boundaries of our previous knowledge and understanding of medieval holy women. While some essays provide new perspectives on the familiar names of the uno…
Hugh Magennis
The Cambridge Introduction to Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer is the best-known and most widely read of all medieval British writers, famous for his scurrilous humour and biting satire against the vices and absurdities of his age. Yet he was also a poet of passionate love, sensitive to issues of gender and sexual difference, fascinated by the ideological differences between the pagan past and the Christian present, and a man of science, knowledgeable in astronomy, astrology and alchemy. Thi…
Cambridge Introduction to Chaucer
The Medieval Bible as Literature
The Restoration of All Things
On July 1, 1555, John Bradford was burned at Smithfield, one of the Protestant divines executed during the reign of Mary Tudor. Shortly before his death he wrote a treatise entitled The Restoration of All Things to counsel a devout woman of his circle. This expounds Romans 8:21–22, where “the creature” is said to be groaning in pain, awaiting release from the bondage of corruption. Here Bradford follows the innovative exegesis of the exiled Stras…
Proto-Surgery, Resurrection, and Race
In one of the most challenging of all medieval miracles, a leg transplant operation is performed by the ‘surgeon saints’ Cosmas and Damian, who return from the afterlife to remove a devotee’s cancerous leg and replace it with one taken from a dead Ethiopian. In recent years, ‘medical humanists’ were the first to express substantial interest in the narrative, finding here a case of ‘proto-surgery’. Subsequently it has featured in investigation of …
Scholastic Literary Theory
Scholastic intentionalism was a complicated and hardly consistent affair. Theologians sought security of meaning in the principle that a biblical author's intention could be found in the literal sense of his text. But the ultimate author of scripture, God, could have inscribed truths that transcended the intentions of inspired but merely human authors. Perhaps a text's intention was not curtailed by the temporal and historical circumstances of it…
Invention and Authorship in Medieval England
Engaging with Chaucer
Art (20 works) · Literature (15 works) · History (13 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Medieval Literature and History (9 works) · Classics (7 works) · History (6 works) · Linguistics (6 works) · Law (5 works) · Poetry (5 works)