Press

Who is the strongest Avenger? The question is interesting not so much because of its answer—no Endgame spoilers here!—but because of the discussion it prompts about the strengths and weaknesses inherent in different kinds of heroism and power. If today’s pop culture explores such questions under the guise of space aliens or tech-loving billionaires, the science-fiction veneer is a futuristic packaging for much older debates on the nature of virtue and leadership. Perhaps the question that would have occupied medieval readers of

The start of a new university semester means many things: reconnecting with friends, working out a class schedule (including when to get in a snooze), and, of course, the last-minute dash to the campus bookstore to track down back-ordered textbooks for the first week’s reading. Student life probably looked a lot different in the Middle Ages—although there were likely still some naps—but then as now, textbooks played an important part in college education. One of the most important such manuals

The mysterious and gilded Empire of Trebizond has for centuries cast a spell on observers. Cervantes called up the city and its emperors in the same breath as serpents, monsters, swashbuckling women, and “enchantments of every kind” as examples of the exotic and fantastical fare to be found in the chivalric tales deluding his hero Don Quixote—equal parts impossibility and allure. The capital city of a Byzantine successor state founded after the sack of Constantinople in 1204, Trebizond (modern Trabzon

Here it is, the flos florum, the mother of all Latin anthologies, and in David Traill’s superb new presentation it deserves a Pindaric victory ode. At nearly 1,400 pages and gorgeously produced, this two-volume edition of the “the Beuern Abbey poems” is a magnificent achievement. It is a model of translation-as-interpretation and concise commentary, and it opens the Carmina Burana up to extensive as well as close reading and to aesthetic as well as textual criticism. Before getting to specifics, I salute the

Magee’s first full translation in English of Calcidius, together with his introduction and the notes, is a major contribution to the field of philosophy in late antiquity and will greatly enhance future research on Calcidius. The author accomplishes the considerable feat of both locating Calcidius in the context of ancient philosophy and addressing his influence on the Middle Ages. Traditionally, and since Waszink’s edition, Calcidius has been ranked among the Latin Christian Neoplatonists, but Magee’s introduction makes amply clear how

The Carmina Burana (“Songs of Beuren”) is unquestionably the most famous collection of medieval poetry in the modern imagination, in no small part because of the industry of the composer Carl Orff (1895-1982), who in 1937 put twenty-four of these poems to music for chorus and orchestra. His arrangements have subsequently enjoyed immense success in concert halls, television commercials, and film soundtracks. Given the enduring popularity of Orff’s compositions, it is surprising that the enterprise of translating the entire manuscript of the Carmina