Download or read book Gower s Vulgar Tongue written by T. Matthew N. McCabe and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2011 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did Gower choose to write his most famous poem in English? New insights into his purpose and the context and tradition of the poem are presented here. After establishing his reputation as a literary author by means of his French and Latin verse, Gower came to recognize the possibilities which English held for serious poetry only in the 1380s. This book gives sustained attentionto the implications of this language choice for the form, readership, religious position, and lay authority of his best-known work, the Confessio Amantis.The author argues that in all of his moral-political-theological writings, Gower's stance as a satirist and publicist is more markedly lay, and more rhetorically momentous for reasons associated with this lay status, than is generally thought. But during the 1380s, the conditions for writing lay public poetry in English made the Confessio a truly remarkable feat, for Gower and for English poetry. Notwithstanding the poem's formal debt to aristocratic literature and the evident elitism of its earliest known readership, the Confessio imagines a broader and more popular audience than do the Vox and the Mirour, modulating its author's vision into a comparatively muted register by appropriating the oblique strategies ofOvidian myth, Ovidian art of love, affective devotional writing, and romance. The resulting "public poetry" is at once subtly accommodated to the conditions for writing in English and profoundly significant for the development ofthe English poetic tradition. T. Matthew N. McCabe is Assistant Professor of English at Ambrose University College (Calgary).
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer written by Suzanne Conklin Akbari and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-07 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the 'father' of the English literary canon, one of a very few writers to appear in every 'great books' syllabus, Chaucer is seen as an author whose works are fundamentally timeless: an author who, like Shakespeare, exemplifies the almost magical power of poetry to appeal to each generation of readers. Every age remakes its own Chaucer, developing new understandings of how his poetry intersects with contemporary ways of seeing the world, and the place of the subject who lives in it. This Handbook comprises a series of essays by established scholars and emerging voices that address Chaucer's poetry in the context of several disciplines, including late medieval philosophy and science, Mediterranean Studies, comparative literature, vernacular theology, and popular devotion. The volume paints the field in broad strokes and sections include Biography and Circumstances of Daily Life; Chaucer in the European Frame; Philosophy and Science in the Universities; Christian Doctrine and Religious Heterodoxy; and the Chaucerian Afterlife. Taken as a whole, The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer offers a snapshot of the current state of the field, and a bold suggestion of the trajectories along which Chaucer studies are likely to develop in the future.
Download or read book Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue written by Francis Grose and published by The Floating Press. This book was released on 2014-02-01 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout history, most dictionaries have served the purpose of preserving the purity of the language, usually preferring the erudite vocabulary of the affluent upper classes to the salty, constantly evolving slang of their working-class counterparts. That began to change in the early modern period, when several innovative lexicographers began publishing collections of slang terms used by particular subcultures, such as criminals. According to scholars, Francis Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue is one of the most important and complete of these early slang dictionaries. Spend some time with this fascinating volume to learn the slang definitions of words and phrases like "poisoned" (pregnant), "shooting the cat" (vomiting after excess alcohol consumption), and "snoozing ken" (a brothel).
Download or read book The Poetic Voices of John Gower written by Matthew W. Irvin and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2014 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gower's use of the persona, the figure of the writer implicated in the text, is the main theme of this book. While it traces the development of Gower's voice through his major works, it concentrates on the dialogue of Amans and Genius in the Confessio Amantis. It argues that Gower negotiates problems of politics and problems of love by means of an analogy between political ethics and the rules of fin amour; Amans and Genius are both drawn from and occupied with amatory and ethical traditions, and their discourse produces a series of attempts to find a coherent and rational union of lover and ruler. The volume also argues that Gower's goal is poetic as well as political: through the personae, Gower's readers experience the pains and pleasures of erotic and social love. Gower's personae voice potential responses to exemplary experience, prompting readers to feel and to judge, and moving them to become better lovers and better rulers. Gower's analogy between fin amour and politics brings the affects of the lover to the action of government, and suggests for both love and rule the moderation that brings peace and joy. Matthew W. Irvin is Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Chair of the Medieval Studies Program at Sewanee.
Download or read book The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower written by Ana Saez-Hidalgo and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-03-31 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower reviews the most current scholarship on the late medieval poet and opens doors purposefully to research areas of the future. It is divided into three parts. The first part, "Working theories: medieval and modern," is devoted to the main theoretical aspects that frame Gower’s work, ranging from his use of medieval law, rhetoric, theology, and religious attitudes, to approaches incorporating gender and queer studies. The second part, "Things and places: material cultures," examines the cultural locations of the author, not only from geographical and political perspectives, or in scientific and economic context, but also in the transmission of his poetry through the materiality of the text and its reception. "Polyvocality: text and language," the third part, focuses on Gower’s trilingualism, his approach to history, and narratological and intertextual aspects of his works. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower is an essential resource for scholars and students of Gower and of Middle English literature, history, and culture generally.
Download or read book Matter and Making in Early English Poetry written by Taylor Cowdery and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-06-29 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This revisionist literary history of early court poetry illuminates late-medieval and early modern theories of literary production.
Download or read book Historians on John Gower written by Stephen Rigby and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2019 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The late fourteenth century was the age of the Black Death, the Peasants' Revolt, the Hundred Years War, the deposition of Richard II, the papal schism and the emergence of the heretical doctrines of John Wyclif and the Lollards. These social, political and religious crises and conflicts were addressed not only by preachers and by those involved in public affairs but also by poets, including Chaucer and Langland. Above all, though, it is in the verse of John Gower that we find the most direct engagement with contemporary events. Yet, surprisingly, few historians have examined Gower's responses to these events or have studied the broader moral and philosophical outlook which he used to make sense of them. Here, a number of eminent medievalists seek to demonstrate what historians can add to our understanding of Gower's poetry and his ideas about society (the nobility and chivalry, the peasants and the 1381 revolt, urban life and the law), the Church (the clergy, papacy, Lollardy, monasticism, and the friars) gender (masculinity and women and power), politics (political theory and the deposition of Richard II) and science and astronomy. The book also offers an important reassessment of Gower's biography based on newly-discovered primary sources. STEPHEN RIGBY is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Social and Economic History at the University of Manchester; SIAN ECHARD is Professor of English, University of British Columbia. Contributors: Mark Bailey, Michael Bennett, Martha Carlin, James Davis, Seb Falk, Christopher Fletcher, David Green, David Lepine, Martin Heale, Katherine Lewis, Anthony Musson, Stephen Rigby, Jens Röhrkasten.
Download or read book 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue written by Scáth Beorh and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-09-08 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 1811 edition is based on Captain Francis Grose's 'Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue' first published in 1785, and is a dictionary of slang words. Grose was one of the first lexicographers to collect slang words from all corners of English-speaking society, not just from the professional underworld of pickpockets and bandits. So while 'The Vulgar Tongue' includes many of the words found in earlier 'scoundrels'' dictionaries (such as Head's 'Canting Academy'), it also lists a whole range of mundane slang words sure to inform the writer and researcher as well as entertain the vulgar.
Download or read book The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature written by David Hopkins and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 771 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature (OHCREL) is designed to offer a comprehensive investigation of the numerous and diverse ways in which literary texts of the classical world have stimulated responses and refashioning by English writers. Covering the full range of English literature from the early Middle Ages to the present day, OHCREL both synthesizes existing scholarship and presents cutting-edge new research, employing an international team of expert contributors for each of the five volumes. OHCREL endeavours to interrogate, rather than inertly reiterate, conventional assumptions about literary 'periods', the processes of canon-formation, and the relations between literary and non-literary discourse. It conceives of 'reception' as a complex process of dialogic exchange and, rather than offering large cultural generalizations, it engages in close critical analysis of literary texts. It explores in detail the ways in which English writers' engagement with classical literature casts as much light on the classical originals as it does on the English writers' own cultural context. This first volume, and fourth to appear in the series, covers the years c.800-1558, and surveys the reception and transformation of classical literary culture in England from the Anglo-Saxon period up to the Henrician era. Chapters on the classics in the medieval curriculum, the trivium and quadrivium, medieval libraries, and medieval mythography provide context for medieval reception. The reception of specific classical authors and traditions is represented in chapters on Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, Statius, the matter of Troy, Boethius, moral philosophy, historiography, biblical epics, English learning in the twelfth century, and the role of antiquity in medieval alliterative poetry. The medieval section includes coverage of Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate, while the part of the volume dedicated to the later period explores early English humanism, humanist education, and libraries in the Henrician era, and includes chapters that focus on the classicism of Skelton, Douglas, Wyatt, and Surrey.
Download or read book The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature written by Rita Copeland and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-28 with total page 770 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature (OHCREL) is designed to offer a comprehensive investigation of the numerous and diverse ways in which literary texts of the classical world have stimulated responses and refashioning by English writers. Covering the full range of English literature from the early Middle Ages to the present day, OHCREL both synthesizes existing scholarship and presents cutting-edge new research, employing an international team of expert contributors for each of the five volumes. OHCREL endeavours to interrogate, rather than inertly reiterate, conventional assumptions about literary 'periods', the processes of canon-formation, and the relations between literary and non-literary discourse. It conceives of 'reception' as a complex process of dialogic exchange and, rather than offering large cultural generalizations, it engages in close critical analysis of literary texts. It explores in detail the ways in which English writers' engagement with classical literature casts as much light on the classical originals as it does on the English writers' own cultural context. This first volume, and fourth to appear in the series, covers the years c.800-1558, and surveys the reception and transformation of classical literary culture in England from the Anglo-Saxon period up to the Henrician era. Chapters on the classics in the medieval curriculum, the trivium and quadrivium, medieval libraries, and medieval mythography provide context for medieval reception. The reception of specific classical authors and traditions is represented in chapters on Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, Statius, the matter of Troy, Boethius, moral philosophy, historiography, biblical epics, English learning in the twelfth century, and the role of antiquity in medieval alliterative poetry. The medieval section includes coverage of Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate, while the part of the volume dedicated to the later period explores early English humanism, humanist education, and libraries in the Henrician era, and includes chapters that focus on the classicism of Skelton, Douglas, Wyatt, and Surrey.
Download or read book The Unspeakable Gender and Sexuality in Medieval Literature 1000 1400 written by Victoria Blud and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2017 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An investigation of the motif of the unspeakable as manifested in a wide range of medieval texts, from the Exeter Book to Chaucer.
Download or read book John Gower and the Limits of the Law written by Conrad van Dijk and published by DS Brewer. This book was released on 2013 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of the ways in which Gower's poetry engages with contemporary law and legal questions. It has long been thought that John Gower was probably a lawyer before turning to poetry, and this study reveals his active engagement with contemporary legal debates; they include constitutional questions, jurisdictional issues, private vengeance, jurisprudential concepts (such as equity and the rigor iuris), and aspects of criminal law. The author argues that the Confessio Amantis in particular demonstrates Gower's uncertainty about how to reconcile the ideal of a just law with alternative modes of justice, such as self-help, royal discretion, and divine will. The book also examines the parallel development of the exemplum and casus in medieval literature. Exempla frequently create a sense of narrative closure by means of some form of punishment, or as Gower would put it, "vengeance". How then do we set Gower's reputation as a sympathetic writer alongside his frequent desire forclosure and punishment? What are the limits of exemplarity and law? These questions are answered by reading Gower in relation to the volatile politics of the Ricardian period, and in comparison with the poetic concerns of contemporary writers such as Chaucer and Langland. In so doing, the book provides a searching introduction to the intersection between literature and law in the late fourteenth century. Dr. Conrad van Dijk is Assistant Professor of English at Concordia University College of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada).
Download or read book Medieval Shakespeare written by Ruth Morse and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-07 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many, Shakespeare represents the advent of modernity. It is easy to forget that he was in fact a writer deeply embedded in the Middle Ages, who inherited many of his shaping ideas and assumptions from the medieval past. This collection brings together essays by internationally renowned scholars of medieval and early modern literature, the history of the book and theatre history to present new perspectives on Shakespeare and his medieval heritage. Separated into four parts, the collection explores Shakespeare and his work in the context of the Middle Ages, medieval books and language, the British past, and medieval conceptions of drama and theatricality, together showing Shakespeare's work as rooted in late medieval history and culture. Insisting upon Shakespeare's complexity and medieval multiplicity, Medieval Shakespeare gives readers the opportunity to appreciate both Shakespeare and his period within the traditions that fostered and surrounded him.
Download or read book Social England written by Henry Duff Traill and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Social England A Record of the Progress of the People Edited by H D Traill and J S Mann Illustrated Edition written by Henry Duff TRAILL (and MANN (James Saumarez) the Elder.) and published by . This book was released on 1906 with total page 886 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Social England 1274 1509 written by Henry Duff Traill and published by . This book was released on 1902 with total page 888 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
