Ethics and Power in Medieval English Reformist Writing

Ethics and Power in Medieval English Reformist Writing PDF Author: Edwin D. Craun
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139484427
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
The late medieval Church obliged all Christians to rebuke the sins of others, especially those who had power to discipline in Church and State: priests, confessors, bishops, judges, the Pope. This practice, in which the injured party had to confront the wrong-doer directly and privately, was known as fraternal correction. Edwin Craun examines how pastoral writing instructed Christians to make this corrective process effective by avoiding slander, insult, and hypocrisy. He explores how John Wyclif and his followers expanded this established practice to authorize their own polemics against mendicants and clerical wealth. Finally, he traces how major English reformist writing - Piers Plowman, Mum and the Sothsegger, and The Book of Margery Kempe - expanded the practice to justify their protests, to protect themselves from repressive elements in the late Ricardian and Lancastrian Church and State, and to urge their readers to mount effective protests against religious, social, and political abuses.

Ethics and Power in Medieval English Reformist Writing

Ethics and Power in Medieval English Reformist Writing PDF Author: Edwin D. Craun
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139484427
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Get Book Here

Book Description
The late medieval Church obliged all Christians to rebuke the sins of others, especially those who had power to discipline in Church and State: priests, confessors, bishops, judges, the Pope. This practice, in which the injured party had to confront the wrong-doer directly and privately, was known as fraternal correction. Edwin Craun examines how pastoral writing instructed Christians to make this corrective process effective by avoiding slander, insult, and hypocrisy. He explores how John Wyclif and his followers expanded this established practice to authorize their own polemics against mendicants and clerical wealth. Finally, he traces how major English reformist writing - Piers Plowman, Mum and the Sothsegger, and The Book of Margery Kempe - expanded the practice to justify their protests, to protect themselves from repressive elements in the late Ricardian and Lancastrian Church and State, and to urge their readers to mount effective protests against religious, social, and political abuses.

Becoming a Poet in Anglo-Saxon England

Becoming a Poet in Anglo-Saxon England PDF Author: Emily V. Thornbury
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139868136
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
Combining historical, literary and linguistic evidence from Old English and Latin, Becoming a Poet in Anglo-Saxon England creates a new, more complete picture of who and what pre-Conquest English poets really were. It includes a study of Anglo-Saxon words for 'poet' and the first list of named poets in Anglo-Saxon England. Its survey of known poets identifies four social roles that poets often held - teachers, scribes, musicians and courtiers - and explores the kinds of poetry created by these individuals. The book also offers a new model for understanding the role of social groups in poets' experience: it argues that the presence or absence of a poetic community affected the work of Anglo-Saxon poets at all levels, from minute technical detail to the portrayal of character. This focus on poetic communities provides a new way to understand the intersection of history and literature in the Middle Ages.

The City of Poetry

The City of Poetry PDF Author: David Lummus
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108839452
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Shows how medieval Italian poets viewed their authorship of poetry as a function of their engagement in a human community.

Boccaccio and Exemplary Literature

Boccaccio and Exemplary Literature PDF Author: Olivia Holmes
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009224336
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
Olivia Holmes explores the Decameron's sceptical and sexually permissive contents against the backdrop of medieval religion and didacticism.

A New Literary History of the Long Twelfth Century

A New Literary History of the Long Twelfth Century PDF Author: Mark Faulkner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316516091
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
Mark Faulkner offers a compelling new narrative of what happened to English-language writing after the Norman Conquest of 1066.

Image, Text, and Religious Reform in Fifteenth-Century England

Image, Text, and Religious Reform in Fifteenth-Century England PDF Author: Shannon Gayk
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139492055
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Focusing on the period between the Wycliffite critique of images and Reformation iconoclasm, Shannon Gayk investigates the sometimes complementary and sometimes fraught relationship between vernacular devotional writing and the religious image. She examines how a set of fifteenth-century writers, including Lollard authors, John Lydgate, Thomas Hoccleve, John Capgrave, and Reginald Pecock, translated complex clerical debates about the pedagogical and spiritual efficacy of images and texts into vernacular settings and literary forms. These authors found vernacular discourse to be a powerful medium for explaining and reforming contemporary understandings of visual experience. In its survey of the function of literary images and imagination, the epistemology of vision, the semiotics of idols, and the authority of written texts, this study reveals a fifteenth century that was as much an age of religious and literary exploration, experimentation, and reform as it was an age of regulation.

The Culture of Inquisition in Medieval England

The Culture of Inquisition in Medieval England PDF Author: Mary Catherine Flannery
Publisher: D. S. Brewer
ISBN: 1843843366
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Groundbreaking essays show the variety and complexity of the roles played by inquisition in medieval England. Inquisition in medieval and early modern England has typically been the subject of historical rather than cultural investigation, and focussed on heresy. Here, however, inquisition is revealed as playing a broader role in medievalEnglish culture, not only in relation to sanctions like excommunication, penance and confession, but also in the fields of exemplarity, rhetoric and poetry. Beyond its specific legal and pastoral applications, inquisitio was a dialogic mode of inquiry, a means of discerning, producing or rewriting truth, and an often adversarial form of invention and literary authority. The essays in this volume cover such topics as the theory and practice ofcanon law, heresy and its prosecution, Middle English pastoralia, political writing and romance. As a result, the collection redefines the nature of inquisition's role within both medieval law and culture, and demonstrates the extent to which it penetrated the late-medieval consciousness, shaping public fame and private selves, sexuality and gender, rhetoric, and literature. Mary C. Flannery is a lecturer in English at the University of Lausanne; Katie L. Walter is a lecturer in English at the University of Sussex. Contributors: Mary C. Flannery, Katie L. Walter, Henry Ansgar Kelly, Edwin Craun, Ian Forrest, Diane Vincent, Jenny Lee, James Wade, Genelle Gertz, Ruth Ahnert, Emily Steiner

Narrating the Crusades

Narrating the Crusades PDF Author: Lee Manion
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139917188
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
In Narrating the Crusades, Lee Manion examines crusading's narrative-generating power as it is reflected in English literature from c.1300 to 1604. By synthesizing key features of crusade discourse into one paradigm, this book identifies and analyzes the kinds of stories crusading produced in England, uncovering new evidence for literary and historical research as well as genre studies. Surveying medieval romances including Richard Cœur de Lion, Sir Isumbras, Octavian, and The Sowdone of Babylone alongside historical practices, chronicles, and treatises, this study shows how different forms of crusading literature address cultural concerns about collective and private action. These insights extend to early modern writing, including Spenser's Faerie Queene, Marlowe's Tamburlaine, and Shakespeare's Othello, providing a richer understanding of how crusading's narrative shaped the beginning of the modern era. This first full-length examination of English crusading literature will be an essential resource for the study of crusading in literary and historical contexts.

Chaucer and the Subversion of Form

Chaucer and the Subversion of Form PDF Author: Thomas A. Prendergast
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107192846
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Brings 'new formalist' approaches to Chaucer, focusing on formal agency, bodies, disability, ethics, poetics, reception, and scale.

Chaucer's Scribes

Chaucer's Scribes PDF Author: Lawrence Warner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108426271
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
Important intervention in Middle English studies that challenges widely accepted narratives on the identities of Chaucer's scribes.