Papers by Suzanne M . Yeager
Chapter: "Late Medieval Pilgrimage to Jerusalem: the anonymous 'Itinerarium cuiusdam Anglici, 1344-45,' William Wey's 'Itineraria,' and Sir Richard Torkington's 'Diarie of Englysshe Travel'"
Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative, pp. 17-47., 2008
This chapter from Yeager's -Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative- book explores Jerusalem pilgrim acco... more This chapter from Yeager's -Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative- book explores Jerusalem pilgrim accounts composed by late medieval English authors. Other notable English pilgrim itineraries originate from such authors as Sir Richard Guylforde's chaplain, along with Thomas Brygg, in addition to the anonymous compilers of the 'Informacyon for Pygrymes unto the Holy Lande,' the writers of 'The Book of Sir John Mandeville,' and the anonymous authors of lesser-known pieces. These works, along with the accounts by Anonymous, Wey, and Torkington, show a complex pattern of borrowing among one another and from possible intermediary sources. In this chapter, Yeager shows that pilgrim writers strove for a degree of similarity with other Christian depictions of Jerusalem, and that they demonstrated an interest in inspiring religious solidarity around the symbol of Jerusalem among their English and continental European audiences.
-The Siege of Jerusalem- and Biblical Exegesis: Writing about Romans in Fourteenth-Century England
The Chaucer Review, vol. 39.1 (2004): 70-102, 2004
"Writing about Romans in Fourteenth-Century England" is companion piece to a later version of the... more "Writing about Romans in Fourteenth-Century England" is companion piece to a later version of the article featured in Yeager's monograph, -Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative-. The article also serves as an important preface to the study of Jewish identity and vengeance explored in her -Medium Aevum- article, "Jewish Identity in -The Siege of Jerusalem- and Homiletic Texts: Models of Penance and Victims of Vengeance for the Urban Apocalypse." In "Writing about Romans," Yeager explores the Christian habits of biblical exegesis formed in the centuries after the expulsion of Jews from England. The article places the -Siege- poem within the context of the Papal Schism, viewing the poem's twinning of Christian and Jewish identities as a response to moral and theological crises. Here, Yeager examines the influences of English Christian theologians who wrote in defense of Jews, and borrowed Jewish tradition. Yeager's study proposes the devotional practice of the crusade of the soul, wherein Christian audiences imagined themselves as co-suffers with Jewish communities recounted in the 70 C.E. Roman siege of Jerusalem.
Book Chapter: "Fictions of Espionage: Performing Pilgrim and Crusader Identities in the Age of Chaucer" in -The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer,- ed. S.C. Akbari and J. Simpson
The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer, eds. Suzanne Conklin Akbari and James Simpson, 2020
The cultural capital of crusading and of Muslim scripture in the context of Chaucer's world are t... more The cultural capital of crusading and of Muslim scripture in the context of Chaucer's world are the focal points of this chapter, which is part of Suzanne Conklin Akbari and James Simpson's collection, -The Oxford Handbook to Chaucer.- Yeager's chapter explores the uses of pilgrimage, crusading, and Muslim scripture in the creation of auctoritas as it is deployed in fourteenth-century travel accounts of Jerusalem. Medieval travellers contended with a popular view which held their writing suspect, as seen in Chaucer’s satire of the pilgrim’s tendency to curiositas. In this study, Yeager shows how some pre-modern travel writers negotiated the pitfalls of curiositas and even used it to their advantage. In their pilgrim accounts, writers like Simon Simeonis and Thomas Brygg strove to create models of their own religious, political, or social aspirations through their associations with the Holy Land. Using crusading tropes, appeals to the Bible and to the Qur’an to negotiate the omnipresent cultural critique of pilgrimage, these travelers fashioned authoritative personae for writers whose exploits earned social rewards at home. This study thus re-contextualizes Chaucer’s critiques of travellers and sheds new light on his pilgrim narrators. (pp.197-215)
Review: Middle English Literature: A Guide to Criticism, ed. Roger Dalrymple
Notes and Queries, 2005
Medieval Pilgrimage as Heterotopia: the pilgrim as maritime adventurer and aspiring crusader in Saewulf's -Relatio de situ Jerusalem-
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 2020
Saewulf’s Relatio de situ Jerusalem is one of the most significant yet understudied pilgrim texts... more Saewulf’s Relatio de situ Jerusalem is one of the most significant yet understudied pilgrim texts of the twelfth century. Documenting the Jerusalem-bound traveler’s adventures through the medieval Mediterranean, the text is the first extant pilgrim document written immediately after Latin Christian armies seized control of the holy city. This article examines the text’s remarkable interest in autobiography and explores the resonance which crusading, early crusading narrative, Islamic presence, and Mediterranean voyaging had upon the pilgrim genre. This new analysis of Saewulf’s pre-modern self-fashioning is crucial to ways in which literary historians assess pilgrim literature through the valuable anthropological theories advanced by Edith and Victor Turner. As argued here, the status of a militarized Mediterranean in the twelfth century led to a shift in how pilgrims wrote about themselves. Saewulf positioned himself as a pilgrim who is transformed by his vivid exploits, not at the...
Marco Polo and the Encounter of East and West, edited by Suzanne Akbari and Amilcare Iannucci, 2008
This chapter examines the striking differences in early receptions of The Book of Sir John Mandev... more This chapter examines the striking differences in early receptions of The Book of Sir John Mandeville and those of Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa’s Le Devisement dou Monde. In many ways the Devisement hewed to premodern notions of veracity, and – to this end – Polo says that he did not write “half of what [he] saw.” In contrast, the Mandeville writer selectively reinscribed marvelous content to his sources, reifying places and peoples with miraculous or incredible natures. This chapter proposes that this rhetorical maneuver added to the medieval audience perception of The Book's reliability, for the Mandeville-writer was, after all, describing exactly the kind of content premodern audiences expected to see. While Polo and Rustichello may have prepared the Devisement for a certain critical reception, Mandeville’s Book contained information twice as “incredible” as that in the Devisement, yet was received as fact by most western European and English audiences. This chapter shows the multifocal nature of late medieval, European audience reception of travel literature, and the position of what we now call fiction, relative to these bodies of work. It also explores the ever-important uses of the portrayals of Jerusalem in establishing the longevity and influence of medieval texts that purported to portray the world in its entirety.
Medieval Crusading in the Literary Contexts of England: Teaching Romance and Chronicle
Literature Compass, 2005
Past scholarship has proven the generic category of romance to be no simple classification scheme... more Past scholarship has proven the generic category of romance to be no simple classification scheme.1 For the past fifteen years, a subset called “crusade romance” has added much complexity to this discussion, if only for the texts’ epic scale, violence, vengeance, and cultural fantasies of the Other. Certainly, the creation of new generic subsets within romance represents an endless exercise whose current usefulness may have tapered; however, the applicability of the generic debate in the classroom retains its vitality simply because students often carry with them traditionally based preconceptions of romance. At the same time, more recent approaches to romance, such as those which reach across the disciplines, add new contexts to the discussion of romance. This article discusses a multi-disciplinary approach to teaching the romance and chronicle texts of medieval crusading that were produced mainly in England during the twelfth through early fifteenth centuries. While the title of the course, “The Crusade Romances: The Project of Empire” invokes only one literary genre and discipline, the course brought a sampling of romance genres, crusade chronicles, crusading art, and medieval philosophy to bear on the production of the so-called crusade romance.
During the early medieval period, crusading brought about new ways of writing about the city of J... more During the early medieval period, crusading brought about new ways of writing about the city of Jerusalem in Europe. By creating texts that embellished the historical relationship between the Holy City and England, English authors endowed their nation with a reputation of power and importance. In Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative, Suzanne Yeager identifies the growth of medieval propaganda aimed at rousing interest in crusading, and analyses how fourteenth-century writers refashioned their sources to create a substantive (if fictive) English role in the fight for Jerusalem. Centring on medieval identity, this study offers assessments of some of the fourteenth century's most popular works, including English pilgrim itineraries, political treatises, the romances Richard, Coeur de Lion and The Siege of Jerusalem, and the prose Book of Sir John Mandeville. This study will be an essential resource for the study of medieval literary history, travel, crusade, and the place of Jerusalem.
Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature
Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative
Racial Imagination and the Theater of War
A Companion to British Literature, 2014
Medium Aevum, 2011
In the very early fifteenth century, an English preacher, frightened by the desolations of the Hu... more In the very early fifteenth century, an English preacher, frightened by the desolations of the Hundred Years War, advised his congregation to take stock of the apocalyptic signs around them, and to view themselves in the likeness of the Jewish community under attack by Titus and Vespasian during the first-century Roman siege of Jerusalem. Aligning a late medieval Christian parish with an embattled Jewish community would prove to be an effective rhetorical device that dared its audiences to imagine not only a shared ruin, but also a shared humanity. A few years earlier, the romance entitled "The Siege of Jerusalem" began to circulate in England, dramatizing the events of the first-century siege, and embellishing these happenings with chivalric trappings. By that time, England had already experienced invasions on its shores and limitations on its sea powers imposed by Castilian-French forces, as well as repeated incursions from the north, as Scottish and English troops harassed one another’s borders. In North Yorkshire, where the romance originated, many locals made their living by fighting with Scottish neighbours, and had themselves participated in sieges directly across the English Channel. In exploring the "Siege" poem as an apocalyptic text, I draw attention to an often-overlooked moment nevertheless vital to medieval Christian religious narrative: the interval between the Passion of Christ and the later destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. This forty-year span was interpreted by Christian exegetes as the historical moment when the Jewish people awaited divine vengeance for their role in the Crucifixion. Significantly, this moment would also become an appropriate analogue to the apocalypse. The poet depicts these four decades as heavily freighted with expectation and the trappings of suspense, coming to a crisis point in the siege.The complex presentation of the Jews suggests that the poet and his source saw value in making Jewish figures relatable, thereby inviting the audiences to entertain the possibility of a better fate for the holy city’s citizens. In doing so, the narrative emphasizes this weighty moment between Passion and Vengeance and thereby offers a more nuanced reading of the "Siege" as an apocalyptic text. Certainly the ugly narrative of violence and retribution is present, but the faculty of agency receives special attention in the poem. This article continues my work on Jerusalem and Jewish identities as spaces of premodern Christian affective piety. This piece draws from Christian homiletic and apocalyptic texts which remember the first-century siege alongside Jewish ritual remembrances on the 9th of Av (Tisha b'Av).
The Blackwell Companion to British Literature, eds. DeMaria, Chang, and Zacher, 2014
In the fourteenth-century Middle English romance, "Richard, Coeur de Lion," Muslim flesh is roast... more In the fourteenth-century Middle English romance, "Richard, Coeur de Lion," Muslim flesh is roasted and served for dinner on multiple occasions. In one of these provocative scenes, the heads of the so-called Saracen adversaries, plated and served "all hot," provide gruesome spectacles of black skin, grinning lips, and white teeth. With in this single episode, the poet invites medieval audiences to gaze upon the punished flesh of non-Christian adversaries, and to consider the contemporary popular theology, where white often represented the color of salvation. This portrayal of anthropophagy, seen in the dual contexts of the crusades and the established texts on the arts of war, necessarily categorized non-Christians according to race and religion, and, as I discuss here, questioned the proper treatment of other religious groups during times of social crisis. Over the past two decades, scholarly attention has turned toward theorizing race in terms of its applications to the Middle Ages. Many of these projects have debated what human characteristics, activities, beliefs, and associations constituted "race," investigating, for example, the significance of skin color and other physiological traits, the roles of ethnic affiliations, or the influences then seen to arise from geography and climate.
"'Canaan's Calamite' (Folger 6494): A Mother's Cannibalism and Inverted Eucharistic Ceremony in a 17th-Century Dramatic Text", 2010
Ritual, by its very nature, demands to be replicated, and its component forms can change over tim... more Ritual, by its very nature, demands to be replicated, and its component forms can change over time. It would also seem that some rituals contain core elements that, when adapted beyond a certain point, create parody or ritual failure. Such is the case in the inversion of liturgical themes seen in medieval and early modern depictions of the destruction of Jerusalem. The play, Canaan's Calamitie, printed in 1618, belongs to an extensive tradition relating the Roman destruction of the holy city in 70 C.E. (Folger 6494). This grim subject matter was of long-standing interest to western European audiences, as different versions of the event were adapted by Christian authors shortly after first-century Jewish chronicler, Josephus, wrote of the siege in The Jewish War. Since its historical occurrence, the siege has been remembered by Jewish communities worldwide, who memorialize this second fall of the Temple, along with that of the first, on a day of mourning called the 9th of Ab. By the fourth century, the Josephan account was revised by a Christian writer, Pseudo-Hegesippus, who fictionalized that the Romans were Christianized in the mid first century, and had destroyed Jerusalem and its Jewish citizens in order to avenge Christ's death, rather than out of loyalty to Caesar. This rescripted Christian remembrance would take on a life of its own in subsequent Christian histories of the siege, and in liturgical apparatus, biblical commentary, romance, poetry, prose, and drama. While dramatic productions of the siege of Jerusalem are not yet known to have taken place in England before the fifteenth century, earlier versions of siege plays performed in France may have influenced their appeal elsewhere. In England, because so many source materials related to the siege were available during the early seventeenth century, it is difficult to trace direct lines of influence. Canaan's Calamitie shares unmistakable characteristics with past accounts of the event found in such English sources as John of Tynemouth's Historia Aurea, the fourteenthcentury alliterative romance The Siege of Jerusalem, and its "offspring," the fifteenth-century works Titus and Vespasian and The Siege in Prose. By the seventeenthcentury, Canaan's Calamitie, attributed to Thomas Dekker, and probably written by the contemporary Thomas Deloney, showed continued attention to the siege. That these events held public interest is seen in the publication of an identical, printed text of Canaan's Calamitie which appeared again in 1677 (Folger D861; contains the missing C gathering of the 1618 text).
Books by Suzanne M . Yeager
Introduction, edited collection: Remembering the Crusades: Myth, Image, and Identity, co-written with Nicholas Paul
Remembering the Crusades: Myth, Image, and Identity, co-ed. with Nicholas Paul, 2012
Few events in European history generated more historical, artistic, and literary responses than t... more Few events in European history generated more historical, artistic, and literary responses than the conquest of Jerusalem by the armies of the First Crusade in 1099. This epic military and religious expedition, and the many that followed it, became part of the collective memory of communities in Europe, Byzantium, North Africa, and the Near East. Remembering the Crusades examines the ways in which those memories were negotiated, transmitted, and transformed from the Middle Ages through the modern period.
Bringing together leading scholars in art history, literature, and medieval European and Near Eastern history, this volume addresses a number of important questions. How did medieval communities respond to the intellectual, cultural, and existential challenges posed by the unique fusion of piety and violence of the First Crusade? How did the crusades alter the form and meaning of monuments and landscapes throughout Europe and the Near East? What role did the crusades play in shaping the collective identity of cities, institutions, and religious sects?
In exploring these and other questions, the contributors analyze how the events of the First Crusade resonated in a wide range of cultural artifacts, including literary texts, art and architecture, and liturgical ceremonies. They discuss how Christians, Jews, and Muslims recalled and interpreted the events of the crusades and what far-reaching implications that remembering had on their communities throughout the centuries.
Remembering the Crusades is the first collection of essays to investigate the commemoration of the crusades in eastern and western cultures. Its unprecedented multidisciplinary and cross-cultural approach points the way to a complete reevaluation of the place of the crusades in medieval and modern societies.
Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative
Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative, 2008
During the early medieval period, crusading brought about new ways of writing about the city of J... more During the early medieval period, crusading brought about new ways of writing about the city of Jerusalem in Europe. By creating texts that embellished the historical relationship between the Holy City and England, English authors endowed their nation with a reputation of power and importance. In Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative, Suzanne Yeager identifies the growth of medieval propaganda aimed at rousing interest in crusading, and analyses how fourteenth-century writers refashioned their sources to create a substantive (if fictive) English role in the fight for Jerusalem. Centering on medieval identity, this study offers assessments of some of the fourteenth century's most popular works, including English pilgrim itineraries, political treatises, the romances Richard, Coeur de Lion and The Siege of Jerusalem, and the prose Book of Sir John Mandeville. This study will be an essential resource for the study of medieval literary history, travel, crusade, and the place of Jerusalem.
Thesis Chapters by Suzanne M . Yeager
The Passion of Christ in Medieval England together with an Edition of Oxford, Bodleian MS Wood Empt 17, "Meditacyons on the Tyme of Masse"
Oxford M.Phil Thesis, 1997
The manuscript, Oxford, Bodleian, Wood Empt 17, “Meditacyons on the Tyme of Masse,” is a paralitu... more The manuscript, Oxford, Bodleian, Wood Empt 17, “Meditacyons on the Tyme of Masse,” is a paraliturgical document that may have been associated with the nuns at Syon Abbey. Taking elements from the Durandus Rationale, the work, signed “B. Langforde, Priest,” offers the Canon of the Mass, and other liturgical commentary in Middle English. Yeager’s M. Phil. Thesis is one of the earliest Modern English transcriptions and editions of Wood Empt 17; the edition is part of a larger study which was directed by Professor Anne Hudson at Oxford University in the late 1990’s. The project represents Yeager’s earliest work as well as a thoughtful study of affective piety and women’s liturgical cultures.
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Papers by Suzanne M . Yeager
Books by Suzanne M . Yeager
Bringing together leading scholars in art history, literature, and medieval European and Near Eastern history, this volume addresses a number of important questions. How did medieval communities respond to the intellectual, cultural, and existential challenges posed by the unique fusion of piety and violence of the First Crusade? How did the crusades alter the form and meaning of monuments and landscapes throughout Europe and the Near East? What role did the crusades play in shaping the collective identity of cities, institutions, and religious sects?
In exploring these and other questions, the contributors analyze how the events of the First Crusade resonated in a wide range of cultural artifacts, including literary texts, art and architecture, and liturgical ceremonies. They discuss how Christians, Jews, and Muslims recalled and interpreted the events of the crusades and what far-reaching implications that remembering had on their communities throughout the centuries.
Remembering the Crusades is the first collection of essays to investigate the commemoration of the crusades in eastern and western cultures. Its unprecedented multidisciplinary and cross-cultural approach points the way to a complete reevaluation of the place of the crusades in medieval and modern societies.
Thesis Chapters by Suzanne M . Yeager
Bringing together leading scholars in art history, literature, and medieval European and Near Eastern history, this volume addresses a number of important questions. How did medieval communities respond to the intellectual, cultural, and existential challenges posed by the unique fusion of piety and violence of the First Crusade? How did the crusades alter the form and meaning of monuments and landscapes throughout Europe and the Near East? What role did the crusades play in shaping the collective identity of cities, institutions, and religious sects?
In exploring these and other questions, the contributors analyze how the events of the First Crusade resonated in a wide range of cultural artifacts, including literary texts, art and architecture, and liturgical ceremonies. They discuss how Christians, Jews, and Muslims recalled and interpreted the events of the crusades and what far-reaching implications that remembering had on their communities throughout the centuries.
Remembering the Crusades is the first collection of essays to investigate the commemoration of the crusades in eastern and western cultures. Its unprecedented multidisciplinary and cross-cultural approach points the way to a complete reevaluation of the place of the crusades in medieval and modern societies.