The De Brailes Hours, a manuscript designed and illuminated by William de Brailes and his workshop at Oxford in the year of 1240, was the first book of hours in the history of manuscripts. Caught in the boom of commercial book trade, in the mid-thirteenth century every artist could have the texts and images of the book selected by its buyer. Specially planned and customized for its patron—a laywoman named Susanna—and her devotional days, the De Brailes Hours’ format, content, and illustrations provided a model for many of the books of hours following in the next two centuries. After roughly seventeen decades (or more), the Bedford Hours was produced under the hands of the Bedford master and his workshop for the marriage of the Duke of Bedford …show more content…
By examining the similarities and differences of these two manuscripts, one can discern a visible development in the function of books of hours from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries; that is, they gradually began to manifest various intentions of the patrons and carry more responsibilities than just for devotional purposes. In order to benefit the upcoming compare and contrast of the two books of hours, an introduction and a visual analysis of the De Brailes Hours is much needed. First of all, the dimension of the De Brailes Hours is 150 × 125 mm with a text space of 115 × 80 mm, an almost square-shaped size that is much smaller once compared to the Bedford Hours. The pages are made of vellum, bound with straps between two wooden boards that are originally covered in a brick-red …show more content…
Same with the De Brailes Hours, the Bedford Hours is also a book of hours created for daily devotional prayers of its patron—who is also a female contemporary—with elaborate images and texts. Both of these manuscripts have the same format of a book, which is longer than it is wide. They are both made of vellum, on which there are both Latin and French, and the fonts seem to be of the same kind. There are historiated initials, full-page miniatures, and illustrated scenes from the Bible stories present in both books, as well as ornamentation that do not play a part in the narration. Medallions are used in the Bedford Hours, too, despite the difference in shapes (the De Brailes Hours sometimes have oval medallions, while every medallion in the Bedford Hours is round). In addition, the blank space at the end of each text line in the Bedford Hours is also filled with decoration. Last but not least, both of these two books of hours show a clear intervention of the patrons. There are a few pages cut out from the De Brailes Hours, and there is evidence that shown such was done before the binding under the agreement of the artist himself. There are also additional suffrage prayers with St. Lawrence on them, supposedly added after the book has been planned, which can only be a result of Susanna’s intervention. For the Bedford
Eadfrith, Bishop of the Lindisfarne Church, originally wrote this book, for God and for Saint Cuthbert and – jointly – for all the saints whose relics are in the Island. And Ethelwald, Bishop of the Lindisfarne islanders, impressed it on the outside and adorned it with gold and with gems and also with gilded-over silver – pure metal. And Aldred, unworthy and most miserable priest, glossed it in English between the lines with the help of God and Saint Cuthbert….(Backhouse 7).
The book begins with a prologue, in which a letter is sent from a musician working for a cardinal in 1347. It is sent from the papal court of Avignon and is received by some of the musician's ...
...opin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." In Literature and Its Writers: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ann Charters and Samuel Charters, Eds. Boston: Bedford Books, 1997. 158-159.
Froissart’s Chronicles, simply known as the Chroniques, is considered by historians as the one of the important entities that recounts the events which happened during the Hundred Years’ War period. It was an extensive literary work with approximately 1.5 million words in length, written in Middle French prose by Jean Froissart. The Chronicles start by narrating the deposition of King Edward II in year 1326 and covering events from this time onward up to year 1400, hence can be significant in the study of the first part of the Hundred Years’ War. This source is also of vital importance in the study as well as the understanding of the chivalric culture of the 14th century England and French as chivalry and knighthood are the central ideal of
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Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." Heritage of American Literature. Ed. James E. Miller. Vol. 2. Austin: Harcourt Brace Jovanich, 1991. 487. Print.
Castiglione, Balclesar. "The Book of the Coutier ." Castiglione, Balclesar. The Third Book. London: Norton & Company, 1523. 147-187.
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. Eds. Elizabeth M. Schaaf, Katherine A. Retan, and Joanne Diaz. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1997. 12-14. Print.
In this brief monograph, we shall be hunting down and examining various creatures from the bestiary of Medieval/Renaissance thought. Among these are the fierce lion of imperious, egotistical power, a pair of fantastic peacocks, one of vanity, one of preening social status, and the docile lamb of humility. The lion and the peacocks are of the species known as pride, while the lamb is of an entirely different, in fact antithetical race, that of humility and forgiveness. The textual regions we shall be exploring include the diverse expanses, from palace to heath, of William Shakespeare, the dark, sinister Italy of John Webster, and the perfumed lady's chambers of Ben Jonson and Robert Herrick.
15 Cassirer, 15. 16 Cassirer, 171. 17 Cassirer, 136. 18 Cassirer, 164. 19. Cragg, Gerald R. The Church and the Age of Reason, 1648-1789.
Hunt, Leigh. "Pocket-books and Keepsakes". The Keepsake. Ed. William Harrison Ainsworth. London: Hurst, Chance & Co., & Robert Jennings, 1828.
Roger Babusci et al. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1994. 115-136. Print. “The Medieval Period: 1066-1485.”
Rice, Eugene E. and Anthony Grafton. The Foundations of Early Modern Europe, 1460-1559. 2nd. ed. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1994.
5) Discuss one of the following ideas in Renaissance writing, with particular reference to one or two texts: excess; idleness; plain-speaking; spirituality. Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller (1594) explores a Renaissance world that has spun on its axis and turned upside-down by the weight of corporeal excess, particularly the amassed fragments of the anatomised body. The text originates from an England gripped by the extremes of socio-political, religious and literal epidemic. The seismic change of the sixteenth-century witnessed Reformation schisms in the unified church, the decay of feudalistic social hierarchy, and the ideological contagion of radical Protestant malcontent.