The eleven chapters in this international volume draw on a variety of theoretical and
methodological approaches to focus our attention on medieval and early modern things (ca.
700-1600). The range of things includes actual objects (the Altenburg Crucifixion a copy of
Hieronymus Brunschwig's Liber de arte distillandi a pilgrim's letter) imagined objects (a
prayed cloak for the Virgin Mary) and narrative objects in texts (the Alliterative Morte
Arthure the Ordene de Chevalerie Hartmann von Aue's Erec Heinrich of Neustadt's Apollonius
of Tyre Luís de Camões's Os Lusíadas and the vita of Saint Guthlac). Each in its own way the
papers consider how things do what they do in texts and art often foregrounding the
intersection between the material and the immaterial by exploring such questions as how things
act how they express power and how texts and images represent them. Medieval and early modern
things are repeatedly shown to be more than symbolic or passive they are agentive and
determinative in both their intra- and extradiegetic worlds. The things that are addressed in
this volume are varied and are embedded or entangled in different contexts and societies and
yet they share a concerted engagement in human life.
