Bøker i Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies-serien

Dante‿s Volume from Alpha to Omega brings together essays written by internationally recognized scholars to explore the poet‿s encyclopedic impulse in light of our own frenzied information age. This comprehensive collection of essays, coedited by Carol Chiodo and Christiana Purdy Moudarres, examines how Dante‿s spiritual quest is powered by an encyclopedic one, which has for more than seven centuries drawn a readership as diverse as the knowledge his work contains. The essays investigate both the intellectual and spiritual pleasures that Dante‿s Commedia affords, underscoring how, through the sheer breadth of its knowledge, the poem demands collective and collaborative inquiry. Rather than isolating the poetic or theological strands of the Commedia, the book acts as a bridge across disciplines, braiding together the well-worn strands of poetry and theology with those of philosophy, the sciences, and the arts. The wide range of entries within Dante‿s poetic summa yield multiple opportunities to reflect on their points of intersection, and the urgency of the convergence of the poem‿s aesthetic, intellectual, and affective aims.Â

While political activists have long decried the cultural and economic marginalization of Appalachia in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Appalachia has similarly been excluded from the study of colonial expansion, transatlantic conflict, and slavery in the early modern Atlantic world. Drawing on sources in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Latin, and English, this monograph underscores the chaotically international, polyglot nature of early Appalachian history and foregrounds the region as a locus of imperial conflict during the early modern period. It likewise explores the European obsession with Appalachian mineral resources from 1528 to 1715, reframing Appalachian history within the fields of Latin American, early American, and Atlantic history. Ultimately, Appalachia as Contested Borderland of the Early Modern Atlantic provides new perspectives for scholars and students and suggests new directions for research in Native American and Indigenous studies, environmental studies, and Appalachian studies.

"Considered by most scholars to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote, The Tempest is a stormy tale of betrayal and forgiveness. After being banished by his brother Antonio, Prospero harnesses the magic of an otherworldly island full of monsters and spirits to seek revenge. In reworking this play for a twenty-first-century audience, Kenneth Cavander focuses on the humor and the magic in the tale, much of which has largely escaped modern audiences in recent years"--

The Grinnell Beowulf is a translation and teaching edition of the Old English poem. Six students at Grinnell College—Eva Dawson, Emily Johnson, Jeanette Miller, Logan Shearer, Aniela Wendt, and Kate Whitman, all ’14—worked with Tim Arner, Associate Professor of English, to translate Beowulf into readable and poetic modern English. What started as a Mentored Advanced Project became an extended collaboration that resulted in the production of an edition designed for both first-time readers and advanced students. The Grinnell Beowulf includes over 165 annotations that accompany the text, as well as introductions to the poem and the translation process.Beowulf is the most celebrated poem of the Anglo-Saxon era. It tells the story of a mighty warrior who defends his friends and homeland from lethal threats both human and monstrous. Beowulf’s battles with Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and an angry dragon are interwoven with scenes of feasts and feuds that provide a view of Scandinavian cultural practices and historical traditions. Though the poem had been absent from the English literary tradition for centuries, Beowulf has become a canonical text in high school and college English courses, thanks in part to J.R.R. Tolkien’s study of the poem and his use of it as a source for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy