Interfaces: A Journal of Medieval European Literatures
type: channel
description: Interfaces promotes connective and interdisciplinary views of the literatures of medieval Europe and explores their place and significance in a world of global literature. Interfaces is an open-access peer-reviewed journal and invites scholarly papers in English, French, German, Italian, or Spanish. Read more about our Scope.
publisher: Milano University Press
language: en
publication name: Interfaces: A Journal of Medieval European Literatures
issn: 2421-5503
copyright: Except where otherwise noted, the content of this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). Authors retain copyright of their work. The CC BY-SA 4.0 licence allows readers to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, as long as the original author is credited and as long as any works that are derived from the original are distributed under the same terms.
items: Cuckoo and Cosmos: The Summer Canon as a Matter of Performance
items: Occasional Literature and Patronage in Later Medieval and Early Modern Periods
items: The Search for Books in Uncharted Territory, c. 800–1500
items: Introduction: the Medieval Experience of Book Searching
items: The Quest for Text. Greek Manuscripts and Medieval Latin Translators
items: Finding Patristic Authorities in the Carolingian Period
items: In Search of a Harrowing Tale: Manuscripts of the Latin Translation of 'De Christi passione'
items: Lettori degli 'Astronomica' di Manilio tra X e XII secolo
items: Searching for Manuscripts and Running a Business: Printing and the Search for Texts in the Fifteenth Century
items: Supplementing Gellius in Fifteenth-Century Italy: the Problem of the Greek
items: Stocking a Library at the Turn of the Eleventh Century: the Case of Herbert Losinga, Bishop of Norwich
items: 'Alle meine Gedichte sind Gelegenheitsgedichte:' the Problems and Possibilities of Occasionality
items: How to Succeed as a Favour Seeker: Two Foreign Epicists' Quest for Patronage in Seventeenth-century Sweden
items: The Occasional Muse: Textual Genesis and Literary Innovation in Komnenian Byzantium
items: Poetry and Patronage in the Barberini Entourage: the 'Technopaignia' of the Southern Italian Greek-Speaking Poet Francesco Arcudi, Bishop of Nusco (1590-1641)
items: The Occasional Lyric in an Early Modern Persian Anthology
items: The Occasionality of Byzantine Didacticism: a Case Study from the Twelfth Century (Milan, Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, C 222 inf. f. 218r)
items: Narrating Time in the Twelfth Century
items: Time in the Twelfth Century
items: Folding Time: Honorius Augustodunensis' 'Imago Mundi'
items: Out of Time: Ekphrasis, Narration, and Temporal Experience in Twelfth-Century Romances of Antiquity
items: The Limits of the Present: Hugh of Saint-Victor's 'Pictura' of Noah's Ark and Augustine's 'Distentio Animi'
items: Columns of Time: Imagined 'Spolia' and Historical Meaning in the 'Kaiserchronik'
items: Sequence and Simultaneity in Wace and Chrétien de Troyes
items: Jenseits der Zeit? Konzepte zur Ritualisierung von Ewigkeit im monastischen Leben des 12. Jahrhunderts
items: Zukünfte im Konjunktiv. Versuche der Antizipation und Modellierung von Kommendem im 'König Rother'
items: From the Heavens to the Nile and from Creation to al-Nāṣir Muḥammad
items: Transformations and Translocations of Medieval Literature
items: Introduction to 'Interfaces' 9
items: Valentin and his Wild Brother in European Literature: How French is a Medieval French Romance?

Cuckoo and Cosmos: The Summer Canon as a Matter of Performance
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description: This essay presents a new interpretation of the Summer Canon, one of the best-known works of medieval song. It proposes an understanding of the song's form that emerges from a process of dynamic interaction between performer and textual object. It reconsiders the role and location of the manuscript's performance instructions, discusses the role of the Latin contrafact, and argues for an interpretation of the song's cuckoo as a recursive formal device, suggesting that the piece's use of repetition explores both the endless motions of cosmic bodies and the limitations of human ones.
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creator: Daniel Reeve
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Daniel Reeve https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2025-10-06
publication date: 2025-10-06
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-13-04

Occasional Literature and Patronage in Later Medieval and Early Modern Periods
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description: Number 11 of Interfaces contains a thematic issue entitled Occasional Literature and Patronage in Later Medieval and Early Modern Periods, edited by Nikos Zagklas and Ingela Nilsson.
subject: Full Issue
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creator: Nikos Zagklas
creator: Ingela Nilsson
creator: Margaret Mullett
creator: Aglae Pizzone
creator: Theodore S. Beers
creator: Francesco G. Giannachi
creator: Elena Dahlberg
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Nikos Zagklas, Ingela Nilsson, Margaret Mullett, Aglae Pizzone, Theodore S. Beers, Francesco G. Giannachi, Elena Dahlberg https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2024-08-28
publication date: 2024-08-28
starting page: 140 p.
ending page: 140 p.
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-11-01

The Search for Books in Uncharted Territory, c. 800–1500
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description: The twelfth issue of Interfaces: A Journal for Medieval Literatures is a thematic issue guest edited by Reka Forrai. It contains the proceedings of a conference that took place at the University of Southern Denmark in 2022.
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creator: Reka Forrai
creator: Lars Boje Mortensen
creator: Jesse Keskiaho
creator: Aidan Conti
creator: Matteo Rossetti
creator: Samu Niskanen
creator: Pieter Beullens
creator: Marianne Pade
creator: Kristian Jensen
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Reka Forrai, Lars Boje Mortensen, Jesse Keskiaho, Aidan Conti, Matteo Rossetti, Samu Niskanen, Pieter Beullens, Marianne Pade, Kristian Jensen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2024-12-07
publication date: 2024-12-07
starting page: 166 p.
ending page: 166 p.
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-12-01

Introduction: the Medieval Experience of Book Searching
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description: The introduction outlines how the searching for texts by medieval scholars has been under-researched, and why the art of bibliography was radically different in the age before the printed book. Key questions are sketched and related to the articles published in the issue.
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creator: Reka Forrai
creator: Lars Boje Mortensen
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Réka E. Forrai, Lars Boje Mortensen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2024-12-07
publication date: 2024-12-07
starting page: 1
ending page: 15
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-12-02

The Quest for Text. Greek Manuscripts and Medieval Latin Translators
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description: Medieval translators from Greek had to face an important challenge in getting hold of high quality model texts on which their works could rely. Documentary evidence on the subject is limited: it suggests that the acquisition of Greek manuscripts was often realised as the marginal effect of diplomatic activity. However, the reports of exchanges between monarchs and their envoys likely represent only a fraction of the transfer process of Greek texts and books to the Latin world. The article surveys the available evidence regarding Latin translations of philosophical, theological, and scientific texts from Greek sources from the twelfth through the fourteenth century. Although our knowledge is often tentative and incomplete, the study of the translators' models is rewarding for the insight that they give into the availability of exceptional Greek manuscripts and rare texts in that period.
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creator: Pieter Beullens
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Pieter Beullens https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2024-12-07
publication date: 2024-12-07
starting page: 95
ending page: 108
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-12-07

Finding Patristic Authorities in the Carolingian Period
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description: This article investigates how and for what reasons Carolingian scholars sought and found works by the so-called church fathers. It begins by discussing the use of late antique bibliographical guides to learn about patristic titles and their orthodoxy. It looks at how Carolingian scholars went about acquiring copies of interesting works through their networks, and the peculiarities particular to the search for patristic texts. It closes by looking at examples of how some of the works of Augustine of Hippo were 'edited' by Carolingian scholars, arguing that such active engagement with these texts took place more often than sometimes thought.
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creator: Jesse Keskiaho
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Jesse Keskiaho https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2024-12-07
publication date: 2024-12-07
starting page: 16
ending page: 40
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-12-03

In Search of a Harrowing Tale: Manuscripts of the Latin Translation of 'De Christi passione'
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description: This paper examines the manuscripts of the Latin translation of Eusebius of Alexandria's sermo 17 as evidence for medieval text searches. This homily, which treats the apprehension of Jesus, his trial and subsequent descent into hell, is found in four manuscripts (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 343; Cambridge, St John’s College, C. 12; München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm14540; Salzburg, Stiftsbibliothek St Peter, a VII 5), which evince two distinct searches for the homily. In the English manuscripts, the homily fills a lacuna in Easter season within the Homiliary of Angers. In the earlier two manuscripts, the homily appears as part of a textual block that served to stock developing library collections. The evidence these manuscripts present for text-hunting help elucidate the influence the work of this obscure Byzantine author had in the Latin world.
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creator: Aidan Conti
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Aidan Conti https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2024-12-07
publication date: 2024-12-07
starting page: 41
ending page: 54
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-12-04

Lettori degli 'Astronomica' di Manilio tra X e XII secolo
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description: Manilius' Astronomica, a didactic poem composed in the 1st century CE, remained forgotten for a long time, at least until the end of the 10th century. This paper, therefore, aims to investigate the earliest and uncertain evidence of the medieval reception of the text, beginning with its possible rediscovery. In the first part, the article reexamines the textual evidence of the possible rediscovery of the poem by Gerbert of Aurillac in the library of Bobbio (epistles 8 and 130 Riché–Callou). The second part, however, demonstrates that the interest in Manilius' poem shown by Gerbert of Aurillac was not an isolated phenomenon. Indeed, one of the oldest manuscripts of the Astronomica (Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, 1465), dating back to the 11th century, contains some interesting marginal glosses and reading marks in the first book. The analysis of the marginal notes thus provides valuable material for better understanding the ways in which the poem was read and helps to explain the erroneous attribution to Aratus of Soli.
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creator: Matteo Rossetti
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Matteo Rossetti https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2024-12-07
publication date: 2024-12-07
starting page: 55
ending page: 76
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-12-05

Searching for Manuscripts and Running a Business: Printing and the Search for Texts in the Fifteenth Century
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description: This contribution seeks to examine how the commercial production of printed books interacted with the search for manuscripts of texts not otherwise known to survive, during the first fifty years after the European invention of printing. Searching for manuscripts is thus considered from the perspective of it being an economic activity. Producers of manuscript and of printed books alike had to locate and acquire a text to work from. This could range from the easy acquisition of a local exemplar, the acquisition of exemplars from known but distant locations, to the search for texts whose location was unknown, and all the way to the search for exemplars of texts whose survival was uncertain. By exploring the most ambitious types of search within this broader context, we will seek to understand better the circumstances under which the commercial production of printed books could enable a business model, one amongst many, that not only made such a search possible but even required it. We will seek to establish when the associated direct and indirect cost of an ambitious search could be a worthwhile investment, or at least could seem to be. In doing so we also aim to understand more clearly why this could be a potential path towards profit for commercial producers of printed books, while it would have been unviable for commercial producers of manuscript books.
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creator: Kristian Jensen
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Kristian Jensen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2024-12-07
publication date: 2024-12-07
starting page: 128
ending page: 166
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-12-09

Supplementing Gellius in Fifteenth-Century Italy: the Problem of the Greek
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description: The article discusses an important aspect of fifteenth-century textual scholarship, the restoration of Greek passages in Latin texts. Focusing on Guarino Veronese's work on Gellius, it shows the difficulties fifteenth-century textual critics encountered in their endeavours to procure exemplars from which to work. Analysing both his letters and the evidence of the manuscripts connected to him, it also shows how Guarino, in theory at least, was a conservative editor of classical texts.
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creator: Marianne Pade
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Marianne Pade https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2024-12-07
publication date: 2024-12-07
starting page: 109
ending page: 127
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-12-08

Stocking a Library at the Turn of the Eleventh Century: the Case of Herbert Losinga, Bishop of Norwich
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description: This article asks how Bishop Herbert Losinga († 1119) obtained books and other material for the library of his new cathedral at Norwich. The bulk of the evidence comes from Herbert's correspondence, which survives in a letter-collection put together under his supervision. The essay interprets the hints available in his letters alongside other relevant bibliographical evidence. Extant manuscripts certainly or possibly at Norwich during Herbert's incumbency are also surveyed. It is suggested that Herbert regarded the creation of the library as one of his foremost achievements in office, and it is one for which he deserves to be remembered.
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creator: Samu Niskanen
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Samu Niskanen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2024-12-07
publication date: 2024-12-07
starting page: 77
ending page: 94
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-12-06

'Alle meine Gedichte sind Gelegenheitsgedichte:' the Problems and Possibilities of Occasionality
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description: This introductory paper sets the stage for the five contributions in this special issue, which examine the occasional literature across various linguistic traditions (Greek, Latin, and Persian) from the eleventh to seventeenth centuries. It offers reflections on the interplay between occasion, lyric, and literature, suggesting that occasional literature can be regarded as a precursor to lyric. Additionally, it explores the close relationship between occasional literature and patronage, which has significantly shaped the modern dismissive attitude toward the former.
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creator: Nikos Zagklas
creator: Ingela Nilsson
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Nikolaos Zagklas, Ingela Nilsson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2024-08-28
publication date: 2024-08-28
starting page: 7
ending page: 16
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-11-02

How to Succeed as a Favour Seeker: Two Foreign Epicists' Quest for Patronage in Seventeenth-century Sweden
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description: The article examines the patronage of two neo-Latin poets from the early seventeenth century: the Bohemian humanist Venceslaus Clemens (1589–1637) and the Dutch writer and physician Johannes Narssius (1580–1637), both of whom produced long epics to celebrate the intervention of the Swedish king Gustavus II Adolphus in the Thirty Years' War (1618–48). These two authors are suitable for a comparative analysis, because they both acted as favour seekers in a foreign country and they approached the same dedicatees. Although both writers were skilful epicists and their networks overlapped, Clemens was unsuccessful in securing funding from his honorandi, while Narssius received both remuneration and a career. By uncovering the two poets' ultimate goals and their strategies to seek favour, I will argue that the system of patronage in which they operated was more complex than an unexperienced writer might have expected and that one of the poets featured here was not fast enough to grasp this system's intricate mechanisms.
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creator: Elena Dahlberg
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Elena Dahlberg https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2024-08-28
publication date: 2024-08-28
starting page: 112
ending page: 140
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-11-07

The Occasional Muse: Textual Genesis and Literary Innovation in Komnenian Byzantium
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description: This paper explores the literary production of the twelfth century from the perspective of innovation. Focusing on occasion rather than occasionality, and understanding it as 'event' or kairos, it reminds us that the assumed constant of occasion and patronage sometimes needs to be teased apart. The Byzantine twelfth-century production is divided into four groups: 1) Commissioned occasional performative texts; 2) Commissioned non-occasional non-performative texts; 3) Not commissioned occasional (or non-occasional) performative (or non-performative), job-related texts; and 4) Not commissioned non-occasional highly experimental texts. Even if these categories admittedly remain somewhat crude and overlapping, the analysis shows, in particular, how the fourth group contains a large number of works that do not fit into a model of dominant patronage and pervasive occasionality. These are texts marked by hybridity and experimentation, perhaps aimed at achieving commissions through performance in the literary circles of Constantinople, the so-called theatra, but possibly written by authors for themselves or friends, relying on a 'poetics of hybridity.'
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creator: Margaret Mullett
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Margaret Mullett https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2024-08-28
publication date: 2024-08-28
starting page: 17
ending page: 50
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-11-03

Poetry and Patronage in the Barberini Entourage: the 'Technopaignia' of the Southern Italian Greek-Speaking Poet Francesco Arcudi, Bishop of Nusco (1590-1641)
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description: In 1638 the Vatican Typography printed a book in memory of Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc; the book was dedicated to Cardinal Francesco Barberini and it is a clear example of the way in which political (and ecclesiastical) power influenced the cultural dynamics of the seventeenth century. Among the scholars who composed verses for the death of de Peiresc we find Francesco Arcudi, a literate priest from the Greek-speaking area of Southern Apulia, who migrated to Rome to study in the Greek College of St. Athanasius. He showed his Greek (linguistic and liturgical) knowledge at the court of Francesco Barberini. Arcudi's poetic production is, in its greatest part, dedicated to Pope Urban VIII Barberini and his nephew, Cardinal Francesco; the poems are written for various occasions, aiming to celebrate the power and glory of the pope’s and cardinal's family. Of great interest are Arcudi's τεχνοπαίγνια, figure epigrams inscribed in the shape of a bee (the arms of the Barberini family) or an eagle (symbol of Barberini's power), here edited for the first time. After an overview of Francesco Arcudi's personality and poetic production, the paper aims to advance our understanding of the cultural landscape (during the pontificate of Pope Barberini) and show the way in which Barberini's patronage influenced Arcudi's work and that of other scholars in the first half of the seventeenth century.
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creator: Francesco G. Giannachi
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Francesco G. Giannachi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2024-08-28
publication date: 2024-08-28
starting page: 94
ending page: 111
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-11-06

The Occasional Lyric in an Early Modern Persian Anthology
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description: This paper argues for a modest expansion of the concept of occasional verse in the context of classical Persian poetry. Discussion of occasionality in this field has traditionally focused on the panegyric ode (qaṣīda), and to a lesser degree on the epigrammatic poem (qiṭʿa). While these forms certainly represent key categories of occasional verse, it is unfortunate that the type of poetry that came to dominate the classical Persian tradition – i.e., love lyric, especially the ghazal – has less of a clear position in the discourse on occasionality. The difficulty in considering ghazals as occasional is, admittedly, first and foremost a result of their tendency to treat abstract themes, rather than to comment on specific events. What I suggest, however, is that we can look to biographical anthologies of poets (taẕkiras) – in particular from the early modern period – since they sometimes offer anecdotes to explain the context underlying the composition and sharing of ghazals. Leveraging these sources could allow us to extend the study of occasional verse in Persian to a much larger body of poetry, with strong representation from all historical periods.
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creator: Theodore S. Beers
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Theo Beers https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2024-08-28
publication date: 2024-08-28
starting page: 74
ending page: 93
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-11-05

The Occasionality of Byzantine Didacticism: a Case Study from the Twelfth Century (Milan, Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, C 222 inf. f. 218r)
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description: The paper analyses, edits and translates an unknown didactic poem on prosodic quantity attributed to John Tzetzes. The poem contains an autobiographical and personal component that has a lyrical dimension, challenging the way in which both didactic poetry and Byzantine poetry is traditionally understood. Moreover, manuscripts such as the one preserving the poem under investigation may be seen as sites for both the frozen moment of the didactic occasion and a continuation of the debate in the form of authorial comments on and to the scribe. Overall, the paper argues that didactic poetry in Byzantium was marked by improvisation and personal experience: in other words, a kind of occasionality.
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creator: Aglae Pizzone
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Aglae Pizzone https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2024-08-28
publication date: 2024-08-28
starting page: 51
ending page: 73
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-11-04

Narrating Time in the Twelfth Century
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description: The essays that make up this special issue of Interfaces share a common interest in the narration and representation of time in twelfth-century texts. The volume focuses primarily on works that we would now regard as 'literary:' writing that prompts an affective response in its audience through the tactical use of rhetoric and form. The issue is primarily concerned with writers operating in England, France and Germany, a cultural zone bound together in the central Middle Ages by the relatively fluid circulation of people, books and ideas across territorial boundaries. While the focus is on the literatures and languages of these regions (vernacular and Latin), the contributors have worked up their essays with an awareness that this is an editorial choice with respect to scope and scale, a choice that brings certain patterns into view at the expense of others. England, France and Germany are conceived of here as a cultural zone nested within a series of larger spaces, with graduations including, but not limited to, western Christendom (overlaying the world of Roman antiquity), eastern Christendom (overlaying the ancient Greek world), and a larger Afro-Eurasian frame. In the broadest terms, what brings these essays together is a common interest in the representation of time and temporal structures in twelfth-century narrative. All concern the way in which different kinds of texts, written in different languages yet in the same period, organize and structure their content so as to depict temporal process, order or change. Across these essays, the authors explore how twelfth-century writers employed literary techniques (be they rhetorical, allegorical or narratological) with the aim of organizing time or engaging creatively and intellectually with theories of time and eternity. Cover image: Robert Hardy, Engel, 2023, oil on canvas, 20 x 20 cm – https://roberthardyartist.com
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creator: Sarah Bowden
creator: Lea Braun
creator: George Younge
creator: Jörg Sonntag
creator: Anya Burgon
creator: Jonathan Morton
creator: Daniel Reeve
creator: Christoph Pretzer
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Sarah Bowden, Lea Braun, George Younge, Jörg Sonntag, Anya Burgon, Jonathan Morton, Daniel Reeve, Christoph Pretzer https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2023-12-07
publication date: 2023-12-07
starting page: 245 p.
ending page: 245 p.
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-10-01

Time in the Twelfth Century
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description: Guest editors Sarah Bowden, Lea Braun and George Younge introduce Issue No. 10 of Interfaces: A Journal of Medieval European Literatures, dedicated to the theme of 'Time in the Twelfth Century,' and offer a general overview of the matter and contents of the contributions.
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creator: Sarah Bowden
creator: Lea Braun
creator: George Younge
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Sarah Bowden, Lea Braun, George Younge https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2023-12-07
publication date: 2023-12-07
starting page: 1
ending page: 16
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-10-02

Folding Time: Honorius Augustodunensis' 'Imago Mundi'
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description: The Imago mundi or "Image of the World" was composed around 1110 by Honorius Augustodunensis, one of the most prolific authors of his age. Presented in the form of a mappa mundi, the Imago offers its reader a verbal 'image' of the cosmos, covering topics ranging from the atom to the heavenly spheres. Despite being one of the most popular works of the central Middle Ages, scholars rarely regard the Imago as a text possessing serious literary merit, dismissing it instead as a derivative exercise in compilation. This essay argues that the Imago is in fact an ambitious literary undertaking with a coherent spiritual agenda. While Honorius recycles (like many of his peers) earlier medieval and especially Neoplatonic cosmological ideas, his text shapes that material in new ways – into a spiritually transformative journey through and above the cosmos, and into the self. At the same time, throughout the work Honorius deploys a range of strikingly material metaphors to describe the world from the perspective of eternity – most notably, the rope of time. In this further literary sense, the ascent to eternity entails a recognition that we dwell in images.
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creator: George Younge
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 George Younge https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2023-12-07
publication date: 2023-12-07
starting page: 59
ending page: 83
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-10-05

Out of Time: Ekphrasis, Narration, and Temporal Experience in Twelfth-Century Romances of Antiquity
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description: This article considers the affective and conceptual work demanded in sophisticated moments of ekphrasis that abound in twelfth-century Old French romances, with particular attention to Alexandre de Paris's Roman d'Alexandre (1180s) and to two of the trio of romans d'antiquité, composed in French at the court of Henry II in England: the Roman de Thebes (c. 1150) and Benoît de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie (1165). Of concern is the description of mechanical artefacts or tents that are depicted with representations of temporal progression, in the light of Virgil, Aeneid 8, and Homer, Iliad 18, available to twelfth-century Latins via Baebius's abbreviated Latin epitome. Narrative time stops for these ekphrastic moments which describe the pictorial representation of time. Henri Bergson's concept of duration (durée) and Boethius's representation of human and divine time in Consolation of Philosophy, 4 are used to think through the productive tension between time as forward movement, as represented through narration, and time as juxtaposed stasis, by which events all happen simultaneously, as represented through pictorial representation. Beyond that, the cosmic implications of these temporal questions bring out the relationship between twelfth-century literary ekphrasis and the medieval reception of the cosmogony of Plato's Timaeus. Particular attention is paid to the marvellous tents of Adrastus in the Thebes and of Alexander the Great in the Alexandre; to the chariot of Amphiaraus in the Thebes with its depiction of Ovidian myth and Macrobian cosmos; and to the astonishing cosmogrammatical automaton in the Troie's Chamber of Beauties. Ekphrases of artefacts representing time and the world clearly resonated with medieval audiences; rather than being superfluous to the action, they appear as fundamental to the composition and performance of historical narrative in French romance.
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creator: Jonathan Morton
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Jonathan Morton https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2023-12-07
publication date: 2023-12-07
starting page: 116
ending page: 150
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-10-07

The Limits of the Present: Hugh of Saint-Victor's 'Pictura' of Noah's Ark and Augustine's 'Distentio Animi'
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description: Imagining the universe from the perspective of providence, the size and complexity of Hugh of Saint-Victor's pictura of Noah's Ark, described in De Pictura Arche (c. 1125–31), has long confused scholars. Many have suggested the text describes a now-lost, real, physical painting; for others it reads as an exclusively verbal picture, an ekphrasis, in the tradition of monastic memory practice. Proponents of the former interpretation argue the density of description defies memory and imagination. But, this paper argues, the pressure the pictura exerts on memory and imagination, as an ekphrasis, might also be seen as central to its rhetorical-spiritual efficacy. In his longer works on the Ark, De Arche Noe Morali and De Vanitate Mundi, Hugh envisages ascent in Augustinian terms, as a stretching of the soul's (or memory's) attention to hold passing times 'as present,' that simulates God's 'eternal present.' Hugh intends, I propose, in keeping with Augustine's distentio animi, that we achieve the pictura's eternal view in the distension of our awareness, our struggle to hold as pictorially 'present' what is described in the time of narrative. As a reworking of the classical, simultaneous 'view from above' along Augustinian lines – as an inner labour, and time-bound exercise – the pictura may also be situated in a new historical-intellectual context: not just as an astonishing example of monastic map-making or mnemotechnical practice, but as part of a later-medieval shift towards thinking about ascent as a coming to terms with time, and eternity as discoverable in the here and now, in the 'limits of the present.'
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creator: Anya Burgon
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Anya Burgon https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2023-12-07
publication date: 2023-12-07
starting page: 84
ending page: 115
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-10-06

Columns of Time: Imagined 'Spolia' and Historical Meaning in the 'Kaiserchronik'
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description: The Middle High German Kaiserchronik, written by an anonymous author in the middle of the twelfth century, focuses at strategic moments of its historiographical narrative on columns in the city of Rome. Drawing on critical literature relating to columns and spolia, this article presents a reading of the columns in the Kaiserchronik as markers of continuity, connected to what Mikhail Bakhtin called chronotopes: mutually semanticising combinations of space and time. In the case of the Kaiserchronik, these chronotopes are the pagan Roman past on the one hand – as a sphere of reference valued for its auctoritas, and as a source of political prestige and legitimacy – and on the other hand the Christian medieval present of the twelfth century: a sphere of reception, interested in benefitting from this prestige and legitimacy, and retrospectively confirming and constructing it in turn. The article uses the concept of allelopoiesis to describe this process as one of reciprocal transformation, and uses Bakhtin's concepts of the chronotope to illustrate the complex relationship between the shifting semantic charges of the Roman Empire. As a result, it becomes apparent how – connected through time by columns as meaningful spolia – antiquity and the Middle Ages emerge as two chronotopes: intertwined as mutually semanticising spheres that, for all their differences (above all in religion), can infuse each other with new meaning.
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creator: Christoph Pretzer
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Christoph Pretzer https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2023-12-07
publication date: 2023-12-07
starting page: 218
ending page: 245
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-10-10

Sequence and Simultaneity in Wace and Chrétien de Troyes
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description: This essay considers the forms and temporal structures of twelfth-century romance and historiography, focusing on Wace's Roman de Brut and Chrétien de Troyes' Yvain and Lancelot. It argues, drawing upon theoretical perspectives from Reinhart Koselleck and François Hartog, that Wace's poem can be understood in terms of a twelfth-century "regime of historicity" (Hartog) that seeks to produce an ordered, "synchronous" (Koselleck) historical time. Chrétien, taken here as writing against Wace in a close, dialectical repudiation of his predecessor's narrative forms, adopts a temporal structure that is incommensurable with Wace's, and in doing so expands the space of possibility for the narrative representation of the past.
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creator: Daniel Reeve
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Daniel Reeve https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2023-12-07
publication date: 2023-12-07
starting page: 188
ending page: 217
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-10-09

Jenseits der Zeit? Konzepte zur Ritualisierung von Ewigkeit im monastischen Leben des 12. Jahrhunderts
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description: This article analyses monastic concepts of ritualising eternity within the Benedictine tradition of the twelfth century. It explores monastic time arrangements and discusses paradigmatically chosen rituals to investigate why and how religious communities strove for a detemporalization within time. It argues that monks not only created and ritually performed a complex 'circle time' where past, present and future were perceptible, but also charged themselves with sacred aura by means of a ritual internalisation of the holiness of different holy role models from the past and the future at the same time. The decisive key to success lay in the phenomenon of hybrid imitation on a horizontal as well as on a vertical level. In this way, time could even be suspended, at least for a moment in time.
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creator: Jörg Sonntag
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Jörg Sonntag https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2023-12-07
publication date: 2023-12-07
starting page: 17
ending page: 37
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-10-03

Zukünfte im Konjunktiv. Versuche der Antizipation und Modellierung von Kommendem im 'König Rother'
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description: The Middle High German König Rother, written in the second half of the twelfth century, tells the story of a dangerous bridal quest that creates conflicts between the Christian West and East, touching themes of correct governance, the role of violence in ruling, as well as the stabilization of society through political interaction. One of its dominant features is the intense modelling of possible future events and the optimal reactions to them. Attempting to anticipate this dangerous future, Rother and his men are depicted in the process of detailed and risk-aware planning. In a close reading of the text, this article shows how the future is conceptualized by both extradiegetic narrator and intradiegetic characters. It traces how these efforts to model the future change in the course of the narrative – from a risk-aware avoidance of contingencies to a relaxed trust in the stability of Rother's rule and divine providence. This reading offers a new understanding of König Rother's narrative complexity beyond the questions of structure and 'Literarisierung' that have dominated criticism on the text so far.
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creator: Lea Braun
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Lea Braun https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2023-12-07
publication date: 2023-12-07
starting page: 151
ending page: 187
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-10-08

From the Heavens to the Nile and from Creation to al-Nāṣir Muḥammad
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description: In the early eighth/fourteenth century the scope and scale of historiographic projects in Syro-Egypt shifted from an earlier focus on biographical monographs towards expansive chronicles, often of universal scope. This article studies the nine-volume universal chronicle Kanz al-durar wa-jāmiʿ al-ghurar and the single-volume but similarly universal chronicle Durar al-tījān wa-ghurar tawārīkh al-azmān, both composed by the Egyptian litterateur Ibn al-Dawādārī (d. after 736/1335). The chronicles are analysed for their use of scalar strategies in managing large amounts of historical information. In their literary and historical presentations, the texts appeal to a celestial scale and a localised Egyptian perspective, both of which are repeatedly connected to praise of the sultan al-Nāṣir Muḥammad (third reign 709/1310–741/1341). This article argues for a holistic understanding of such chronicles by considering their structural organisation, the holograph manuscripts in which the texts survive, and a close reading of their introductions alongside multiple panegyric sections across the works. The shift in scale in historiographical production is linked to the intellectual environment of al-Nāṣir Muḥammad's court in the decades following his return to power in 709/1310.
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creator: Gowaart Van Den Bossche
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Gowaart Van Den Bossche https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2025-11-13
publication date: 2025-11-13
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-13-06

Transformations and Translocations of Medieval Literature
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description: Issue 9 of Interfaces brings together papers given at the Centre for Medieval Literature's symposium on 'Moving Forms: The Transformations and Translocations of Medieval Literature,' held in Athens in 2019. At the heart of the symposium was the exploration of the ways in which the movement of people and books across space and time were driving forces of medieval European literary and intellectual culture. Building on the practices of both comparative literature and entangled history, the symposium aimed to open up connections between literary cultures often considered to be separate. The articles published here cross the geographies and chronologies of medieval literature as they consider a range of forms, from romance to legal writing and from history-writing to animal fables, in examining texts from Georgia, Egypt, Bohemia, Scandinavia and Western Europe (with extensions across the Atlantic into the Americas). While each paper has something for the specialist, we hope that they collectively encourage reading across the full issue, inviting readers to enter into the expanded, comparative and connected, approach to medieval literatures that the symposium explored. Cover image: Pierpaolo Curti, Bridge, 2014, tecnica mista su tela, 120 x 80 cm – Collezione privata – www.pierpaolocurti.com
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creator: Elizabeth M. Tyler
creator: Paolo Borsa
creator: Christian Høgel
creator: Lars Boje Mortensen
creator: Helen F. Leslie-Jacobsen
creator: Pavlína Cermanová
creator: Václav Žůrek
creator: Sandro Nikolaishvili
creator: Doriane Zerka
creator: Mustafa Banister
creator: Lydia Zeldenrust
creator: Sofia Lodén
creator: Jonas Wellendorf
creator: Cornelia Herberichs
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Elizabeth M. Tyler, Paolo Borsa, Christian Høgel, Lars Boje Mortensen, Helen F. Leslie-Jacobsen, Pavlína Cermanová, Václav Žůrek, Sandro Nikolaishvili, Doriane Zerka, Mustafa Banister, Lydia Zeldenrust, Sofia Lodén, Jonas Wellendorf, Cornelia Herberichs https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2022-12-07
publication date: 2022-12-07
starting page: 234 p.
ending page: 234 p.
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-09-01

Introduction to 'Interfaces' 9
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description: The Editors introduce Interfaces 9: Transformations and Translocations of Medieval Literature. The articles published here cross the geographies and chronologies of medieval literature as they consider a range of forms, from romance to legal writing and from history-writing to animal fables, in examining texts from Georgia, Egypt, Bohemia, Scandinavia and Western Europe (with extensions across the Atlantic into the Americas). The Editors also draw attention to a piece about Interfaces in a recently launched journal, where the direct link between a wider, more connected vision of medieval European literature and open access publishing – which places no financial barriers to who publishes and who reads – is addressed.
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creator: Elizabeth M. Tyler
creator: Paolo Borsa
creator: Christian Høgel
creator: Lars Boje Mortensen
rights: Copyright (c) 2022 Elizabeth M. Tyler, Paolo Borsa, Lars Boje Mortensen, Christian Høgel https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2022-12-07
publication date: 2022-12-07
starting page: 1
ending page: 9
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-09-02

Valentin and his Wild Brother in European Literature: How French is a Medieval French Romance?
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description: The medieval romance about the two brothers Valentin and Orson (also known as Nameless) crossed various linguistic and cultural borders in the European Middle Ages and beyond. It is said to have originated in a Francophone context, but the French origin, which is believed to be a chanson de geste, has not been preserved – the earliest surviving sources are three Middle Dutch fragments. The different versions of the tale are generally divided into two strands: the first covers versions in Middle Dutch, Middle Low German, Middle High German, and Old Swedish, and the second includes versions in French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Icelandic, and Yiddish. In this article, we give an up-to-date overview of the two strands and raise the question whether Valentin should be considered as a primarily French tradition. We argue that Valentin cannot be understood only in a monolingual or national context, and that a linear model of transmission does not do justice to the complexity of this tradition. We consider what it means to approach Valentin as a shared European narrative, how each version places itself in this larger tradition, and what insight this approach can give us into the tension as well as fruitful co-existence between local and supralocal. By putting the different versions of the tale in dialogue and paying attention to the places and social networks along which they travelled, the article presents a new way of understanding a literary tradition that once enthralled audiences from Flanders to Silesia, and from Venice to Sweden.
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creator: Lydia Zeldenrust
creator: Sofia Lodén
rights: Copyright (c) 2022 Lydia Zeldenrust, Sofia Lodén https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
date: 2022-12-07
publication date: 2022-12-07
starting page: 144
ending page: 179
doi: 10.54103/interfaces-09-08