Medievalia et Humanistica, No. 28

Since its founding in 1943, Medievalia et Humanistica has won worldwide recognition as the first scholarly publication in America to devote itself entirely to medieval and Renaissance studies. Since 1970, a new series, sponsored by the Modern Language Association of America and edited by an international board of distinguished scholars and critics, has published interdisciplinary articles. In yearly hardbound volumes, the new series publishes significant scholarship, criticism, and reviews treating all facets of medieval and Renaissance culture: history, art, literature, music, science, law, economics, and philosophy. The twenty-eighth volume in the new series of Medievalia et Humanistica contains five original articles exploring topics ranging from medieval ethnicity and self-identity to little-known documents in fifteenth century Italy. Michael Faletra examines a series of discourses during the twelfth century about the Welsh and ancient Britons, considering how these texts inform and are informed by Norman colonialism. Fabian Alfie studies Cecco Angliolieri's poetry and, more generally, early Italian comic tradition. Michael Calabrese focuses on male sexuality as the corollary of the plague in Boccaccio's Decameron and the inescapable condition facing male characters in the collection. Dominique Battles contributes to our understanding of Boccaccio's Teseida in suggesting that the poem amplifies the subject matter of Statius' Thebaid and points toward the matter of Troy. Daniel Bornstein sheds new light on the relative wealth and poverty of the churches in fifteenth-century Cortona by focusing on their inventories. In addition to these five articles, fourteen review notices examine recent publications in medieval and early modern studies completing the twenty-eighth volume of Medievalia et Humanistica.