La Voie De Povret Et De Richesse

Exploring a range of poverty experiences-socioeconomic, moral and spiritual-this collection presents new research by a distinguished group of scholars working in the medieval and early modern periods. Collectively they explore both the assumptions and strategies of those in authority dealing with poverty and the ways in which the poor themselves tried to contribute to, exploit, avoid or challenge the systems for dealing with their situation. The studies demonstrate that poverty was by no means a simple phenomenon. It varied according to gender, age and geographical location; and the way it was depicted in speech, writing and visual images could as much affect how the poor experienced their poverty as how others saw and judged them. Using new sources-and adopting new approaches to known sources-the authors share insights into the management and the self-management of the poor, and search out aspects of the experience of poverty worthy of note, from which can be traced lasting influences on the continuing understanding and experience of poverty in pre-modern Europe.

The allegorical dream-vision poem, La Voie de Povreté et de Richesse, has been known mainly from its incorporation in Le Mesnagier de Paris (1392-94), an anonymous compilation of advice on good living and household management. Composed as an individual work by Jacques Bruyant, probably about fifty years earlier, the poem has now been edited on the basis of the text in the manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fr. 1563, fols 203r-221r. It is a first-person account of the dream of a newly-wed husband, who worries about the financial consequences of marriage and the threat of poverty. In long didactic monologues, allegorical figures (Raison, Entendement, and Barat) address the protagonist. He receives the choice of two pathways, one leading to Poverty, the other to Riches. He chooses the path of Diligence, paved with Perseverance, and reaches the château de Labour, for the solution to his problem lies in working to gain sufficiency. In 2634 verses, Jacques Bruyant combined the protagonist’s dream and return home to his credulous wife, with allegorical didactic discourse, and description of work experience. Common sayings and stock pieces, such as an account of the Seven Deadly Sins, are included. Pierre Gringore’s Le Chasteau de Labour, first printed in Paris in 1499, is an adaptation of the poem, marking continued interest in the subject in the fifteenth century.

Exploring a range of poverty experiences-socioeconomic, moral and spiritual-this collection presents new research by a distinguished group of scholars working in the medieval and early modern periods. Using new sources - and adopting new approaches to known sources - the authors share insights into the management and the self-management of the poor, and search out aspects of the experience of poverty worthy of note, from which can be traced lasting influences on the continuing understanding and experience of poverty in pre-modern Europe.

The anonymous fifteenth-century French verse translation of Boethius’s Consolatio Philosophiae, contained in a single known manuscript, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, fr. 25418, fols 1–74r, is a revised and abridged version of the major French translation, Le Roman de Fortune et de Felicité, edited by Béatrice Atherton as her doctoral thesis for the University of Queensland (1994). The title of the present critical edition is derived from the opening strophe of the reviser’s Prologue: ‘Pour le Tout Poissant honnourer | … Contre Fortune … | Dez dis Böece vueil conter | C’om dit de Consolacion’, which indicates the Christian didactic purpose intended and expressed in moral lessons for living in this world. Consisting of Books I–IV only of the Consolatio, the text lacks the complex philosophical issues of Book V and throws into relief the dichotomy of Fortune and Felicity. Pruning of the mythological narratives, historical examples, and nature images by the reviser produced a somewhat lean abrégé of Boethius’s thought, but with Christian emphasis. With prudent editing, the translation constitutes a coherent whole and is recognised as one of the thirteen distinct medieval French translations of the Consolatio Philosophiae. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 11.0px 'Adobe Garamond Pro'; color: #ffffff}

For a number of years scholars who are concerned with issues of poverty and the poor have turned away from the study of charity and poor relief, in order to search for a view of the life of the poor from the point of view of the poor themselves. Great studies have been conducted using a variety of records, resulting in seminal works that have enriched our understanding of pauper experiences and the influence and impact of poverty on societies. If we return our gaze to ’charity’ with the benefit of those studies' questions, approaches, sources and findings, what might we see differently about how charity was experienced as a concept and in practice, at both community and personal levels? In this collection, contributors explore the experience of charity towards the poor, considering it in spiritual, intellectual, emotional, personal, social, cultural and material terms. The approach is a comparative one: across different time periods, nations, and faiths. Contributors pay particular attention to the way faith inflected charity in the different national environments of England and France, as Catholicism and Calvinism became outlawed and/or minority faith positions in these respective nations. They ask how different faith and beliefs defined or shaped the act of charity, and explore whether these changed over time even within one faith. The sources used to answer such questions go beyond the textual as contributors analyse a range of additional sources that include the visual, aural, and material.

Urban Agriculture in West Africa: Contributing to Food Security and Ur

Drawing on case studies from eight different countries, the con-tributors to this provocative collection of essays demonstrate quite clearly that environmental programmes often have direct and far-reaching consequences for the distribution of wealth and poverty and that they constitute one of the major forms of foreign and state intervention in contemporary African affairs.