This study explores the use of other languages, especially Latin, in medieval and Renaissance English drama. Until the medieval period Latin was regarded as the sacramental language of authority, but in the newly politicized linguistic arena of the late fourteenth century it became a symbol of the potential enemy from Rome.

Here is a comprehensive overview of Celtic mythology and religion, encompassing numerous aspects of ritual and belief. Topics covered include the presence of the Celtic Otherworld and its inhabitants, cosmology and sacred cycles, wisdom texts, mythological symbolism, folklore and legends, and an appreciation of the natural world. Evidence is drawn from the archaeology of sacred sites, ethnographic accounts of the ancient Celts and their beliefs, medieval manuscripts, poetic and visionary literature, and early modern accounts of folk healers and seers.

This book investigates how people learned to read in the Middle Ages. It uses glosses--medieval teachers' notes--on classical Latin texts to show how these complex works were used in a very basic and literal way in the classroom, and argues that this has profound implications for our understanding of medieval literacy and hermeneutics.

his book offers new insights into the rich and varied Dutch literature of the Middle Ages. Sixteen essays written by top scholars consider this literature in the context of the social, historical and cultural developments of the period in which it took shape. The collection includes studies of the most representative authors, genres and works of the time

Little attention has been paid to the political and ideological significance of the exemplum, a brief narrative form used to illustrate a moral. Through a study of four major works in the Chaucerian tradition (The Canterbury Tales, John Gower's Confessio Amantis, Thomas Hoccleve's Regement of Princes, and Lydgate's Fall of Princes), Scanlon redefines the exemplum as a 'narrative enactment of cultural authority'.