Documentary Culture and the Making of Medieval English Literature

Documentary Culture and the Making of Medieval English Literature PDF

Author: Emily Steiner

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2003-05-29

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 9780521824842

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Emily Steiner describes the rich intersections between legal documents and English literature in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. She argues that documentary culture (including charters, testaments, patents and seals) enabled writers to think in new ways about the conditions of textual production in late medieval England.

The Theology of Debt in Late Medieval English Literature

The Theology of Debt in Late Medieval English Literature PDF

Author: Anne Schuurman

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-12-31

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 1009385968

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Exploring debt's permutations in Middle English texts, Anne Schuurman makes the bold claim that the capitalist spirit has its roots in Christian penitential theology. Her argument challenges the longstanding belief that faith and theological doctrine in the Middle Ages were inimical to the development of market economies, showing that the same idea of debt is in fact intrinsic to both. The double penitential-financial meaning of debt, and the spiritual paradoxes it creates, is a linchpin of scholastic and vernacular theology, and of the imaginative literature of late medieval England. Focusing on the doubleness of debt, this book traces the dynamic by which the Christian ascetic ideal, in its rejection of material profit and wealth acquisition, ends up producing precisely what it condemns. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

A Concise Companion to Middle English Literature

A Concise Companion to Middle English Literature PDF

Author: Marilyn Corrie

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-12-24

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 1118835972

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This concise companion examines contexts that are essential to understanding and interpreting writing in English produced in the period between approximately 1100 and 1500. The essays in the book explore ways in which Middle English literature is 'different' from the literature of other periods. The book includes discussion of such issues as the religious and historical background to Middle English literature, the circumstances and milieux in which it was produced, its linguistic features, and the manuscripts in which it has been preserved. Amongst the great range of writers and writings discussed, the book considers the works of the most widely read Middle English author, Chaucer, against the background of the period that he both typifies and subverts. An accessible resource that examines contexts essential to understanding and interpreting writing of the Middle English period Chapters explore the distinctiveness of Middle English literature Brings together discussion and analysis by an international team of Middle English specialists, incorporating fresh material and new insights Includes analysis of Chaucer's writings, and considers them in relation to the work of his Middle English predecessors, contemporaries and successors Incorporates discussion of issues steering the perception of Middle English literature in the present day

Middle English Literature

Middle English Literature PDF

Author: Christopher Cannon

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-04-18

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 0745654762

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book provides a boldly original account of Middle English literature from the Norman Conquest to the beginning of the sixteenth century. It argues that these centuries are, in fundamental ways, the momentous period in our literary history, for they are the long moment in which the category of literature itself emerged as English writing began to insist, for the first time, that it floated free of any social reality or function. This book also charts the complex mechanisms by which English writing acquired this power in a series of linked close readings of both canonical and more obscure texts. It encloses those readings in five compelling accounts of much broader cultural areas, describing, in particular, the productive relationship of Middle English writing to medieval technology, insurgency, statecraft and cultural place, concluding with an in depth account of the particular arguments, emphases and techniques English writers used to claim a wholly new jurisdiction for their work. Both this history and its readings are everywhere informed by the most exciting developments in recent Middle English scholarship as well as literary and cultural theory. It serves as an introduction to all these areas as well as a contribution, in its own right, to each of them.

Translations of Authority in Medieval English Literature

Translations of Authority in Medieval English Literature PDF

Author: Alastair Minnis

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2009-03-19

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 0521515947

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Minnis presents the fruits of a long-term engagement with the ways in which crucial ideological issues were deployed in vernacular texts. He addresses the crisis for vernacular translation precipitated by the Lollard heresy, Langland's views on indulgences, Chaucer's tales of suspicious saints and risible relics, and more.

The Language of Heresy in Late Medieval English Literature

The Language of Heresy in Late Medieval English Literature PDF

Author: Erin K. Wagner

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2024-04-22

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 1501512188

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Vernacular writers of late medieval England were engaged in global conversations about orthodoxy and heresy. Entering these conversations with a developing vernacular required lexical innovation. The Language of Heresy in Late Medieval English Literature examines the way in which these writers complemented seemingly straightforward terms, like heretic, with a range of synonyms that complicated the definitions of both those words and orthodoxy itself. This text proposes four specific terms that become collated with heretic in the parlance of medieval English writers of the 14th and 15th centuries: jangler, Jew, Saracen, and witch. These four labels are especially important insofar as they represent the way in which medieval Christianity appropriated and subverted marginalized or vulnerable identities to promote a false image of unassailable authority.

Theorizing Legal Personhood in Late Medieval England

Theorizing Legal Personhood in Late Medieval England PDF

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2015-06-24

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 9004284648

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Theorizing Legal Personhood in Late Medieval England offers an account of the fluidity and artificiality of legal personhood before the individualistic turn in law vis-à-vis juristictional pluralism.

Imagining Medieval English

Imagining Medieval English PDF

Author: Tim William Machan

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016-01-25

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1107058597

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Imagining Medieval English is concerned with how we think about language, and simply through the process of thinking about it, give substance to an array of phenomena, including grammar, usage, variation, change, regional dialects, sociolects, registers, periodization, and even language itself. Leading scholars in the field explore conventional conceptualisations of medieval English, and consider possible alternatives and their implications for cultural as well as linguistic history. They explore not only the language's structural traits, but also the sociolinguistic and theoretical expectations that frame them and make them real. Spanning the period from 500 to 1500 and drawing on a wide range of examples, the chapters discuss topics such as medieval multilingualism, colloquial medieval English, standard and regional varieties, and the post-medieval reception of Old and Middle English. Together, they argue that what medieval English is, depends, in part, on who's looking at it, how, when and why.

Lanterna Rally - Theme by Grace Themes