Browse Items (72 total)

Cheng Weishi Lun (Chinese: 成唯識論; pinyin: Chéng Wéishì Lùn) or Discourse on the Perfection of Consciousness-only, is a comprehensive discourse on the central teachings of Yogacara framed around Vasubandhu's seminal Yogacara work,…

Xuanzang (600 - 664 AD) is one of the most important figures of Buddhism, whose travelogue about India and Central Asia (Da Tang Xiyu ji) was widely celebrated. At the same time he is the most important translator of Chinese Buddhism, unique in…

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Inventions of the Skin considers a crucial aspect of the visual field of the early modern stage: the painted body of the actor. Organized as a series of studies, the four chapters of this book examine goldface and divinity in York’s…

Beyond Words accompanies a collaborative exhibition held at the McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College; Harvard University’s Houghton Library; and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Featuring illuminated manuscripts from nineteen Boston-area…

Illuminating their breadth and diversity, this book presents a comprehensive and multidisciplinary view of legal documents and their manifold forms, uses, materialities and meanings. In 1951, Suzanne Briet, a librarian at the Bibliotheque Nationale…

"A wood library sounds as if it should be a collection of books on the topic of wood. In fact, it is a collection of wood. How can we “know” with wood? …. Because they are comprehensive collections of wood specimens, wood libraries are of significant…

This study, through focusing on the development of Buddhist rainmaking rites in the Heian era (794-1185), analyzes the efforts of esoteric Buddhist monks to improve their relations with the sovereign and aristocrats of the Japanese court through…

“Shukaku Hosshinnō (1150–1202), pronounced Shūkaku at Ninnaji, the second son of cloistered sovereign Go-Shirakawa (r. 1155–1158), was one of the most influential masters in the history of Shingon lineages. Along with the Tendai abbot Jien…

Public avowals of love between men were common from antiquity through the Middle Ages. What do these expressions leave to interpretation? An extraordinary amount, as Stephen Jaeger demonstrates. Unlike current efforts to read medieval culture through…

What is the force in art, C. Stephen Jaeger asks, that can enter our consciousness, inspire admiration or imitation, and carry a reader or viewer from the world as it is to a world more sublime? We have long recognized the power of individuals to…

This verse translation of The Play of Adam had its world premiere at The Cloisters (Metropolitan Museum of Art) in New York on December 17-18, 2016. It was restaged and filmed at Illinois in 2017, directed by Kyle A. Thomas. A short documentary about…

Medieval Arras was a thriving town on the frontier between the kingdom of France and the county of Flanders, and home to Europe's earliest surviving vernacular plays: The Play of St. Nicholas, The Courtly Lad of Arras, The Boy and the Blind Man, The…

Odd that fiction would be yet another invention claimed for modernity. Yes, that's the way modernity's game is played; and still I marvel that our modernist colleagues never seem tired of playing it, or insisting on the ontology of their favorite…

Carol Symes is the founding executive editor of The Medieval Globe, the first academic journal to promote a global approach to medieval studies. This biannual publication explores the modes of communication, materials of exchange, and myriad…

This book originated as a series of papers delivered at a Symposium on Irish and Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture in Honor of J. E. Cross, held in conjunction with the 30th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo in May 1996. The purpose…

Trade, Travel, and Exploration: An Encyclopedia is a reference book that covers the peoples, places, technologies, and intellectual concepts that contributed to trade, travel and exploration during the Middle Ages, from the years A.D. 525 to 1492.

Drawing on approaches from literary studies, history, linguistics, and art history, and ranging from Late Antiquity to the sixteenth century, this collection views 'translation' broadly as the adaptation and transmission of cultural inheritance. The…

As water availability, management and conservation become global challenges, there is now wide consensus that historical knowledge can provide crucial information to address present crises, offering unique opportunities to appreciate the solutions…

One of the greatest scourges of the later medieval period was plague. While there is a considerable scholarly literature tracing the impact of the dread disease on literature and art, the impermanence of performance has rendered the extension of such…

Shajar al-Durr--known as "Tree of Pearls"--began her remarkable career as a child slave, given as property to the Ayyubid Sultan Salih of Egypt. She became his favorite concubine, was manumitted, became the sultan's wife, served as governing regent,…