Fifteenth-Century Studies Vol. 28

Book excerpt: The focus of the volume, in addition to standard features such as the bibliographical update on 15th-c. theater, is on late-medieval authors as literary critics. Founded in 1977 as the publication organ for the Fifteenth-Century Symposium, Fifteenth-Century Studies has appeared annually since then. It publishes essays on all aspects of life in the fifteenth century, including literature, drama, history, philosophy, art, music, religion, science, and ritual and custom. The editors strive to do justice to the most contested medieval century, a period that has long been the stepchild of research. The fifteenthcentury defies consensus on fundamental issues: some scholars dispute, in fact, whether it belonged to the middle ages at all, arguing that it was a period of transition, a passage to modern times. At issue, therefore, is the verytenor of an age that stood under the influence of Gutenberg, Columbus, the Devotio Moderna, and Humanism. Along with the standard updating of bibliography on 15th-c. theater, this volume is devoted to research on late-medieval authors as literary critics. Thus, for the historian as well as the writer of fiction, the tenuous limits between truth and fantasy (and the role of doubt) are investigated. If there are several eyewitness accounts of an event, which one can be trusted? Medieval memorialists sometimes became advisors to princes and used a rhetoric of careful persuasion. Values such as chivalry, courtly love, and kingly self-representation come up for discussion here.Several essays ponder the structure of poetic forms and popular genres, and others consider more factual topics such as incunabula on medications, religious literature in the vernacular for everyday use, a student's notebook on magic, and late medieval merchants, money, and trade. Contributors: Edelgard DuBruck, Karen Casebier, Emma J. Cayley, Albrecht Classen, Michael G. Cornelius, Jean Dufornet, Catherine Emerson, Leonardas V. Gerulaitis, Kenneth Hodges, Sharon M. Loewald, Luca Pierdominici, Michel J. Raby, Elizabeth I. Wade. Edelgard E. DuBruck is professor emerita in the Modern Languages Department at Marygrove College in Detroit; Barbara I. Gusick is professor emerita of English at Troy University-Dothan, Dothan, Alabama.