Medieval Beginnings

For the final episode of Medieval Beginnings, Mary and Irina look at by far the most popular text (in its time) of all that have featured in the series: The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. The fictional traveller’s fantastical descriptions of different places, peoples and animals across the Holy Land and Asia are almost certainly drawn mainly from other textual sources, rather than direct experience by the unknown author, and yet the work was often used as a source of reference as well as entertainment or prurient interest. Many of the writer’s observations of different political and religious practices could be taken as radical critiques of his homeland. Yet while it often urges appreciation of other cultures, the book is undoubtedly xenophobic and racist in places, foreshadowing the European quest for colonisation: indeed, Christopher Columbus had a copy with him when the Santa Cruz sighted land on 12th October 1492.

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Further reading in the LRB:

Barbara Newman: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n16/barbara-newman/mercenary-knights-and-princess-brides

Irina Dumitrescu is Professor of English Medieval Studies at the University of Bonn and Mary Wellesley as a historian and author of Hidden Hands: The Lives of Manuscripts and their Makers.

For sheer scale and spectacle, surely few plays of any period can match The Digby Play of Mary Magdalene. Boasting at least fifty speaking parts, with multiple locations, scaffolds and pyrotechnics, including an ascent into heaven, this wildly ambitious piece of late Medieval theatre mixes traditional hagiographic drama with magical adventure, romance and broad comedy. For audiences of the time this was not just entertainment, but a profound social and religious experience which, despite its fantastical elements and radical departure from the gospel stories, reflected important moments in their daily lives. Irina and Mary try to make sense of the outlandish plot, how it might have been staged, and the complex, composite figure of Mary Magdalene.

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From the first recorded instance of the word ‘fart’ in English, to nuanced vignettes of sexual power dynamics, the numerous Middle English lyrics that have survived down the centuries, often scribbled in the margins of more ‘serious’ texts, offer a vivid snapshot of everyday medieval life. In the tenth episode of Medieval Beginings, Irina and Mary analyse several of these short, fleeting verses, probably set to music, and consider their possible origins and purpose, their delicious ambiguity, and their equivocal relationship to the sacred manuscripts in which they've been found.

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Further reading in the LRB: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v28/n10/barbara-newman/i-was-such-a-lovely-girl

Listen to 'Sumer is icumen in' sung by The Hilliard Ensemble: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMCA9nYnLWo

Some of the lyrics discussed in this episode can be found online:

Sumer is icumen in:

https://www.luminarium.org/medlit/medlyric/cuckou.php

I Have a Yong Suster

https://www.luminarium.org/medlit/medlyric/suster.php

Maiden in the mor

https://www.luminarium.org/medlit/medlyric/maideninthemoor.php

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maiden_in_the_mor_lay

I have a gentil cock

https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/content/i-have-gentil-cook

Irina Dumitrescu is Professor of English Medieval Studies at the University of Bonn and Mary Wellesley as a historian and author of Hidden Hands: The Lives of Manuscripts and their Makers.

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Chaucer’s 14th century tale of ‘double sorrow’, Troilus and Criseyde, set during the siege of Troy, is the subject of Irina and Mary’s ninth episode of Medieval Beginnings. Based largely on Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato, Chaucer’s novelistic long poem displays a psychological realism that would make Henry James envious, and, with the matchmaker-uncle Pandarus, introduces a character of startling and often perplexing opacity.

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Further reading in the LRB:

Barbara Newman: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n22/barbara-newman/kek-kek!-kokkow!-quek-quek!

Irina Dumitrescu: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n17/irina-dumitrescu/how-to-read-aloud

Mary Wellesley: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n11/mary-wellesley/on-the-nightingale

Irina Dumitrescu is Professor of English Medieval Studies at the University of Bonn and Mary Wellesley as a historian and author of Hidden Hands: The Lives of Manuscripts and their Makers.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Irina and Mary jump to the 14th century for an introspective Arthurian romance about a knight trying to live up to his perfect reputation. The mysterious and intricate Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is perhaps best understood as a series of games within games, in which our hero, a recurring character throughout medieval literature, is never sure what adventure he’s playing.

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Read more in the LRB: 

Mary Wellesley: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n08/mary-wellesley/diary

Frank Kermode: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v29/n05/frank-kermode/who-has-the-gall

Irina Dumitrescu is Professor of English Medieval Studies at the University of Bonn and Mary Wellesley as a historian and author of Hidden Hands: The Lives of Manuscripts and their Makers.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Irina and Mary continue their run of Romances with the Middle English Havelok the Dane, a double Cinderella story of sex, fishing and surprisingly graphic violence, written at the end of the 13th century and set in a pre-Conquest, legendary English past.

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In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

Irina Dumitrescu is Professor of English Medieval Studies at the University of Bonn and Mary Wellesley as a historian and author of Hidden Hands: The Lives of Manuscripts and their Makers.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For the sixth episode in their Medieval Beginnings series, Mary and Irina go full Romance with one of the most elaborate and surprising narrative poems in medieval literature, Le Roman de Silence, a complex, 13th-century Old French tale about gender, power and transformation.

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In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

Irina Dumitrescu is Professor of English Medieval Studies at the University of Bonn and Mary Wellesley as a historian and author of Hidden Hands: The Lives of Manuscripts and their Makers.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If a Middle Ages full of castles, jousts, hawking, illicit love affairs and playful singing in the meadows is what you’re looking for, then look no further than the Lais of Marie de France. These 12th century love stories, written in Anglo-Norman by a writer who was unusually keen to make her name known, describe noble stories of passion, devotion, betrayal, self-sacrifice and magical transformations played out in enchanted woodlands and richly-draped chambers.

Irina and Mary discuss Marie’s various portrayals of love, her luscious powers of description, and the frequent deployment of animals in her stories to expose and resolve human problems.

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Irina Dumitrescu is Professor of English Medieval Studies at the University of Bonn and Mary Wellesley as a historian and author of Hidden Hands: The Lives of Manuscripts and their Makers.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In their fourth episode, Mary and Irina climb inside a tiny cell to explore the Ancrene Wisse, a guidebook written in the early 13th century, originally intended for three anchoresses, but which enjoyed a much wider audience (there was even a copy in Henry VIII’s library).

The women addressed by the text lived lives of extraordinary restriction, permanently enclosed in small anchorholds in order to devote themselves to prayer and contemplation. The Ancrene Wisse is a striking literary artefact, a piece of learned and often beautiful writing, but one which elaborates a broad and detailed conception of sin in its prescription for the control of women's minds and bodies.

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Further reading in the LRB:

Mary Wellesley: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n10/mary-wellesley/this-place-is-pryson

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In the third episode of Medieval Beginnings, Mary and Irina explore the much-chronicled life of St Cuthbert, as told by the most famous writer of the early medieval period, the so-called Venerable Bede. From Cuthbert’s childhood interest in naked handstands, to his later work as a charismatic preacher who could elicit total confession, and as a hermit who enjoyed the assistance of friendly sea otters, it was a life which, as told by Bede, both challenged and conformed to the expected patterns of hagiography.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up here:

Directly in Apple Podcasts at top of this feed, or here: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq

In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

Further reading in the LRB:

Barbara Newman: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n09/barbara-newman/when-medicine-failed

Diarmaid MacCulloch: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v33/n11/diarmaid-macculloch/rome-s-new-mission

Irina Dumitrescu is Professor of English Medieval Studies at the University of Bonn and Mary Wellesley as a historian and author of Hidden Hands: The Lives of Manuscripts and their Makers.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.