Marilina Cesario & Hugh Magennis 
Aspects of knowledge 
Preserving and reinventing traditions of learning in the Middle Ages

This edited collection explores how knowledge was preserved and reinvented in the Middle Ages. Rather than focusing on a historical period or specific cultural and historical events, it eschews traditional categories of periodisation and discipline, establishing connections and cross-sections between different departments of knowledge. The essays cover the period from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries, examining the history of science (computus, prognostication), the history of art, literature, theology (homilies, prayers, hagiography, contemplative texts), music, historiography and geography.

Aspects of knowledge is aimed at an academic readership, including advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as specialists in medieval literature, history of science, history of knowledge, geography, theology, music, philosophy, intellectual history, history of language and material culture.

Table of Content

Introduction – Marilina Cesario and Hugh Magennis
Part I: Anthologies of knowledge
1 Dream divination in manuscripts and early printed books: patterns of transmission – László Sándor Chardonnens
2 Knowledge of the weather in the Middle Ages: Libellus de disposicione totius anni future – Marilina Cesario
3 The Cambridge Songs as anthology of musical knowledge – Ann Buckley
Part II: Transmission of Christian traditions
4 Cristes leorningcnihtas: traditions of the apostles in Old English literature – Hugh Magennis
5 Seeing Jerusalem: schematic views of the Holy City, 1100–1300 – Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Asa Simon Mittman
6 The emergence of devotion to the name of Jesus in the West – Denis Renevey
7 ‘Ther are bokes ynowe’: texts and the ambiguities of knowledge in Piers Plowman – Kath Stevenson
Part III: Past and present
8 Meet the pagans: on the misuse of Beowulf in Andreas – Richard North
9 Reading and writing St Margaret of Scotland from Turgot’s Vita to the Blackadder Prayerbook – Emily Wingfield
Part IV: Knowledge and materiality
10 The Jellinge Stone: from prehistoric monument to petrified ‘book’ – Michelle P. Brown
11 Mis en page: the dimension and layout of books containing Old English – Donald G. Scragg
Index

About the author

Dr Anke Bernau is Lecturer in Medieval Literature and Culture at the University of Manchester