I am pleased to introduce volume four of Cerae: An Australasian Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, which is themed around ‘influence and appropriation’. During the preparation of this volume, the journal was awarded the Bryant Stokes Matilda Award for Cultural Excellence from the University of Western Australia. It was an honour to receive this award, which reflects the hard work and dedication of the current Executive Committee, but also that of previous committees whose work has shaped and developed the journal. Many have contributed to the production of volume four; as Editor, I am grateful to all the members of the Executive and Extended Committee for their enthusiasm and commitment to the journal. I would like to thank Imogen Forbes-Macphail who has been involved with the journal from its inception and whose expertise and advice have been pivotal to the journal’s development and success. On behalf of the Committee, I would also like to extend my gratitude to all who served as peer reviewers for this volume and to the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Western Australia for their ongoing support.

Vanessa Wright, University of Leeds

Abstract: The complex production of translation and editorial intermediation is a timeless, often contentious issue. In the seventeenth century, Abraham Cowley and John Dryden dominated a debate that centred on fidelity to authorial copy. The self–supporting Aphra Behn, who translated from French in the late seventeenth century to earn an income, acknowledged this debate and indicated her preference for Dryden’s translation practice of latitude in her epistolary dedication in the preliminary matter of Agnes de Castro: or, The Force of Generous Love (1688), which was originally written by Jean-Baptiste de Brilhac and entitled Agnès de Castro, Nouvelle Portugaise (1688). Behn’s latitude respected authorial intention but adapted the text when literal translation proved difficult. This article dips below the discursive surface to provide a new way of analysing Behn’s work. Comparing de Brilhac’s original with Behn’s translation reveals the latter’s negotiation of the necessarily complex and at times conflicting role of cultural translator and editorial intermediary. Behn used stagecraft techniques to create the narrative scene, paratextual asides to establish her authorial voice and editorial intermediation, and editorial techniques such as italicisation and capitalisation to further this intermediation and transmit meaning. Behn’s practice not only acknowledged the commercial imperatives of the publishing industry but also typified her human nature.

Jocelyn Hargrave, Monash University

Volume 4 Essay Prize WInner

Abstract: Metaphor, or translatio, is one of the most prominent figures in classical and medieval rhetoric, and the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries inherited both a sense of its importance, and a complex admixture of attitudes about its cognitive and linguistic functions. This was enabled by the teaching of imitatio (μίμησις), ‘the study and conspicuous deployment of features recognizably characteristic of a canonical author’s style or content…’, which emphasised intimate knowledge of as large as possible a library of texts. The close analysis involved necessitated memorising and internalising a wide variety of authorial models, which makes Renaissance authors ideal for a historical examination of one of the key tenets of an influential modern theory: that metaphor is fundamental to cognition. In this paper I survey some sixteenth-century uses as a metaphor of the mirror for counsel, against the background of Lakoff and Johnson’s ‘invariance principle’.

Jenny Smith, Monash University

Abstract: The Dream of the Rood is a poem about the mental and emotional processes that underlie the experience of prayer. The poet is interested in how words and signs transform feeling and perception and produce the ability to experience God. The poet does this, I argue, using two literary tropes. The first is the setting, in the middle of the night, which is a familiar setting for private prayer in Anglo-Saxon narrative sources. The second is through the figure of the cross, which represents Christ as the ‘Word of God’ who, in prayer, gives words to the solitary mystic. The patterns of transformation seen in The Dream of the Rood – from fear and passivity to joy and expressiveness – follow a pattern that is also found in many accounts of nocturnal prayer, particularly in the Anglo-Latin poem De Abbatibus and in Felix’s Life of Guthlac, as well as in Bede’s writings. In each of these accounts, true prayer is a response to signs of God’s presence.

Imogen Volkofsky, University of Sydney

Ralph Berry, Shakespeare’s Settings and a Sense of Place (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2016). Print, 144 pp., US$30.00, ISBN:9781783168088.

Reviewed by: Christine Edwards, University of Queensland

Megan Cassidy-Welch, ed., Remembering the Crusades and Crusading (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016). Print, 252 pp., £33.99, ISBN: 9781138811157

Reviewed by: Francesca Petrizzo, University of Leeds

James Daybell and Andrew Gordon, eds., Women and Epistolary Agency in Early Modern Culture, 1450–1690 (London & New York: Routledge, 2016). Print, 258 pp., £110.00, ISBN: 9781472478269.

Reviewed by: Stephanie Thomson, University of Adelaide

George E. Demacopoulos, The Invention of Peter: Apostolic Discourse and Papal Authority in Late Antiquity. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.) Print, 262 pp., £24.99, ISBN: 9780812223699.

Reviewed by: David W. Kim, Australian National University

Adriana Destro and Mauro Pesce, eds., Texts, Practices, and Groups: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the History of Jesus’ Followers in the First Two Centuries (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2017). Print, 918 pp. €131.37, ISBN: 9782503569017.

Reviewed by: David W. Kim, Australian National University

Greti Dinkova-Brunn and Tristan Major, eds, Teaching and Learning in Medieval Europe: Essays in Honour of Gernot R. Wieland, Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin, 11 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017) Print, 245 pp., €90.00, ISBN: 9782503568430.

Reviewed by: Sarah B. Lynch, Angelo State University

Richard Firth Green, Elf Queens and Holy Friars: Fairy Beliefs and the Medieval Church (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). Print, 285 pp., US$55.00, ISBN: 9780812248432.

Reviewed by: Cynthia Cruz, University of Leeds

Daniel M. G. Gerrard, The Church at War: The Military Activities of Bishops, Abbots and Other Clergy in England, c. 900–1200 (Abingdon & New York: Routledge, 2017). Print, 320pp., £110.00, ISBN: 9781472423757

Reviewed by: Matthew Firth, University of New England

William Chester Jordan and Jenna Rebecca Phillips, eds., The Capetian Century, 1214–1314. Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages 22. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017). Print, 362 pp., €100.00, ISBN: 9782503567181.

Reviewed by: Derek R. Whaley, University of Canterbury

Henry Ansgar Kelly, The Middle English Bible: A Reassessment (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). Print, 368 pp., £58.00, ISBN: 9780812248340.

Reviewed by: Charles Roe, University of Leeds

Ryan Lavelle and Simon Roffey, eds., Danes in Wessex: The Scandinavian Impact on Southern England c. 800–c. 1000 (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2016). Print, 272 pp., £45, ISBN:9781782979319.

Reviewed by: Matthew Firth, University of New England

Sara McDougall, Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, 800-1230 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). Print, 336 pp., £65.00, ISBN: 13: 9780198785828.

Reviewed by: Francesca Petrizzo, University of Leeds

Catherine M. Mooney, Clare of Assisi and the Thirteenth-Century Church: Religious Women, Rules, and Resistance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). Print, 312 pp., US$65.00, ISBN:9780812248173.

Reviewed by: Pelia Werth, University of Kansas

Brian Stock, The Integrated Self: Augustine, the Bible, and Ancient Thought. (Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017). Print, 280 pages, £52.00, ISBN: 9780812248715

Reviewed by: Brendan Walsh, University of Queensland

Stefan Van der Elst, The Knight, the Cross, and the Song: Crusade Propaganda and Chivalric Literature, 1100-1400. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press). Print, 299 pages, US$55.00, ISBN:9780812248968.

Reviewed by: Elizabeth M. Wawrzyniak, Marquette University