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Inferno (Modern Library Classics)

by Dante Alighieri

A groundbreaking bilingual edition of Dante’s masterpiece that includes a substantive Introduction, extensive notes, and appendixes that reproduce Dante’s key sources and influences.

Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion

Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion

Arguing that historians must write in a comic mode, aware of history's artifice, risks, and incompletion, Caroline Walker Bynum here examines diverse medieval texts to show how women were able to appropriate dominant social symbols in ways that allowed for the emergence of their own creative voices. By arguing for the positive importance attributed to the body, these essays give a new interpretation of... (more)

Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters (Middle Ages Series)

Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters (Middle Ages Series)

"These studies . . . not only illuminate the past with a fierce and probing light but also raise, with nuance and power, fundamental issues of interpretation and method."--from the Foreword by Caroline Walker Bynum Female saints, mystics, and visionaries have been much studied in recent years. Relatively little attention has been paid, however, to the ways in which their experiences and voices were mediated by... (more)

The Canterbury Tales

by Geoffrey Chaucer

David Wright's new translation of The Canterbury Tales into modern verse--the first to appear in over thirty years--makes one of the greatest works of English literature accessible to all readers while preserving the wit and vivacity of Chaucer's original text.

The Letters of Abelard and Heloise (Penguin Classics)

The Letters of Abelard and Heloise (Penguin Classics)

by Pierre Abailard, Peter Abelard

The story of Abelard and Heloise remains one of the world’s most dramatic and well-known love affairs. It is told through the letters of French philosopher Peter Abelard and his gifted pupil Heloise. Through their impassioned writings unfolds the story of a romance, from its reckless, ecstatic beginnings to the public scandal, enforced secret marriage, and devastating consequences that followed. These... (more)

Hadewijch: The Complete Works (Classics of Western Spirituality)

Hadewijch: The Complete Works (Classics of Western Spirituality)

by Hadewijch

Belonging to the early thirteenth century, Hadewijch brings us a spiritual message of extraordinary power. She was endowed in no less degree than St. Teresa of Avila with the gifts of visionary mysticism and literary genius. She felt herself strongly a woman, as can be seen from her choosing to join the women's movement of her day, that of the Beguines, who dedicated themselves to a life of true spirituality... (more)

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Tags: medieval catholicism