Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: This article discusses a special type of narrative: encounters with named individuals in hell. The catchment is broad (Homer to Dante) but the focus is on the early Middle Ages. Philological and literary techniques elucidate and reinterpret a number of important visionary texts, Anglo‐Saxon, Merovingian, and Carolingian. Boniface, Ep. 115 re‐emerges as a woman’s vision. Gregory of Tours, DLH 8.5 (Guntram’s banquet of 585), where Chilperic is sighted, finds a place within the Roman tradition of the dark or terrifying banquet and the dangerous telling of dreams. In the Visio Pauperculae (terminus post quem = 3 October 818), Queen Irmengard’s torture is reinterpreted by reference to the NT and to contemporary legal realia. An argument is made for an old emendation that required a romantic and courtly reading, including a fuzzy connection to Dante’s Inferno 5.
Source: Early Medieval Europe
DOI: 10.1111/emed.12738
Author: Danuta Shanzer
Institution: University of Vienna
Language: English
Subfield: Classics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,760
OpenAlex ID: W4403800519