Download or read book Later Middle English Literature Materiality and Culture written by Brian Gastle and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-04-12 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume consider the ways in which material and intellectual culture both shaped and were shaped by the literature of late medieval England. The first section, “Textual Material,” reflects on cultural and social issues generally referred to as the History of Ideas, and how those ideas manifest in later medieval English texts. Essays address, for example, affect in The Book of Margery Kempe, rhetoric in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, anarchy in late medieval political texts, and temporality in Gower’s Confessio Amantis. The essays in the second section, “Material Texts,” examine physical objects – from pilgrim badges, to manuscripts, to money, to early printed editions – and the cultural behaviors associated with them, interpreting these objects and exploring their connections to the important literary and political texts of the age such as Piers Plowman, Lydgate’s Troy Book, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. All of the essays in this collection emerge from the relationships and connections between the issues that characterize Jim Dean’s work: the cultural, material, and aesthetic aspects of later medieval English literature. So too do they reflect a movement in medieval literary studies presaged by Dean’s career of scholarship and teaching, that critical approaches to literary texts are best undertaken with an understanding of the complex cultural and historical milieu that defines both the production of those texts and the production of our own work on those texts.
Download or read book A Handbook of Middle English Studies written by Marion Turner and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-01-30 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Handbook of Middle English Studies “This sharp-minded, coherent set of essays both maps and liberates: not only does it map the intellectual territory of contemporary cultural debate; it also liberates the extraordinary texts of later medieval England to move across that contemporary cultural terrain.” James Simpson, Harvard University “Marion Turner has skilfully choreographed an exciting ensemble of fresh accounts of the English Middle Ages. We see the period in a new light that shows with compassion and imagination, as well as thoughtful scholarship, how the literature of the past speaks to contemporary preoccupations.” Ardis Butterfield, Yale University “Strikingly original: theory-literate and materially-grounded ways of reading Middle English texts.” David Wallace, University of Pennsylvania A Handbook of Middle English Studies presents twenty-six original and accessible essays by leading scholars, analyzing the relationship between critical theory and late-medieval literature. The collection offers a range of entry points into the rich field of medieval literary studies, exploring subjects including the depiction of the self and the mind, the literature of conquest, ideas of beauty and aesthetics, and the relationship between place and literature. Topics that have long been central to the field, such as authorship, gender, and race, feature alongside areas only recently coming under critical scrutiny, such as globalization, the environment, and animality. Collectively, the essays demonstrate that the manuscript culture of late medieval literature raises key theoretical issues concerning the relationship between authors, texts, and readers. A Handbook of Middle English Studies models diverse approaches to medieval texts and stakes a claim in debates about topics ranging from class to the canon, from imagination to nationhood, from sexuality to the public sphere.
Download or read book The Making of Middle English 1765 1910 written by David Matthews and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before the 1760s -- with the major exception of Chaucer -- nearly all of Middle English literature lay undiscovered and ignored. Because established scholars regarded later medieval literature as primitive and barbaric, the study of this rich literary heritage was relegated to antiquarians and dilettantes. In The Making of Middle English, 1765-1910, David Matthews chronicles the gradual rediscovery of this literature and the formation of Middle English as a scholarly pursuit. Matthews details how the careers, class positions, and ambitions of only a few men gave shape and direction to the discipline. Mostly from the lower middle class, they worked in the church or in law and hoped to exploit medieval literature for financial success and social advancement. Where Middle English was concerned, Matthews notes, these scholars were self-taught, and their amateurism came at the price of inaccurately edited and often deliberately "improved" texts intended for a general public that sought appealing, rather than authentic, reading material. This study emphasizes the material history of the discipline, examining individual books and analyzing introductions, notes, glossaries, promotional materials, lists of subscribers, and owners' annotations to assess the changing methodological approaches of the scholars and the shifts in readership. Matthews explores the influence of aristocratic patronage and the societies formed to further the editing and publication of texts. And he examines the ideological uses of Middle English and the often contentious debates between these scholars and organizations about the definition of Englishness itself. A thorough work of scholarship, The Making of MiddleEnglish presents for the first time a detailed account of the formative phase of Middle English studies and provides new perspectives on the emergence of medieval studies, canon formation, the politics of editing, and the history of the book.
Download or read book Middle English Mouths written by Katie L. Walter and published by . This book was released on 2018-06-21 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First full-length study of the mouth's centrality to discourses of physical, ethical and spiritual 'good' in Middle English literature.
Download or read book A Concise Companion to Middle English Literature written by Marilyn Corrie and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-12-24 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book Instructional Writing in English 1350 1650 written by Carrie Griffin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-05-20 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the nature of utilitarian texts in English transmitted from the later Middle Ages to c. 1650, this volume considers textual and material strategies for the presentation and organisation of written knowledge and information during the period. In particular, it investigates the relationship between genre and material form in Anglophone written knowledge and information, with specific reference to that which is usually classified as practical or 'utilitarian'. Carrie Griffin examines textual and material evidence to argue for the disentangling of hitherto mixed genres and forms, and the creation of 'new' texts, as unexplored effects of the arrival of the printing press in the late fifteenth century. Griffin interrogates the texts at the level of generic markers, frameworks and structures, and studies transmission and dissemination in print, the nature of and attitudes to printed books, and the audiences they reached, in order to determine shifting attitudes to books and texts. Learning and Information from Manuscript to Print makes a significant contribution to the study of so-called non-literary textual genres and their transmission, circulation and reception in manuscript and in early modern printed books.
Download or read book Antimercantilism in Late Medieval English Literature written by R. Ladd and published by Springer. This book was released on 2010-10-18 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study explores the relationship between ideology and subjectivity in late medieval literature, documenting the trajectory of antimercantile ideology against major developments in economic theory and practice in the later Middle Ages.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Economics written by Paul Crosthwaite and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-11 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, money, finance, and the economy have emerged as central topics in literary studies. The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Economics explains the innovative critical methods that scholars have developed to explore the economic concerns of texts ranging from the medieval period to the present. Across seventeen chapters by field-leading experts, the book highlights how, throughout literary history, economic matters have intersected with crucial topics including race, gender, sexuality, nation, empire, and the environment. It also explores how researchers in other disciplines are turning to literature and literary theory for insights into economic questions. Combining thorough historical coverage with attention to emerging issues and approaches, this Companion will appeal to literary scholars and to historians and social scientists interested in the literary and cultural dimensions of economics.
Download or read book Challenging Communion written by Jennifer Garrison (Professor of English) and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Medicine and the Seven Deadly Sins in Late Medieval Literature and Culture written by Virginia Langum and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-09-15 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers how scientists, theologians, priests, and poets approached the relationship of the human body and ethics in the later Middle Ages. Is medicine merely a metaphor for sin? Or can certain kinds of bodies physiologically dispose people to be angry, sad, or greedy? If so, then is it their fault? Virginia Langum offers an account of the medical imagery used to describe feelings and actions in religious and literary contexts, referencing a variety of behavioral discussions within medical contexts. The study draws upon medical and theological writing for its philosophical basis, and upon more popular works of religion, as well as poetry, to show how these themes were articulated, explored, and questioned more widely in medieval culture.
Download or read book Medieval Romance and Material Culture written by Nicholas Perkins and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2015 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies of how the physical manifests itself in medieval romance - and medieval romances as objects themselves.
Download or read book Literature as Recreation in the Later Middle Ages written by Glending Olson and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book studies attitudes toward secular literature during the later Middle Ages. Exploring two related medieval justifications of literary pleasure—one finding hygienic or therapeutic value in entertainment, and another stressing the psychological and ethical rewards of taking time out from work in order to refresh oneself—Glending Olson reveals that, contrary to much recent opinion, many medieval writers and thinkers accepted delight and enjoyment as valid goals of literature without always demanding moral profit as well. Drawing on a vast amount of primary material, including contemporary medical manuscripts and printed texts, Olson discusses theatrics, humanist literary criticism, prologues to romances and fabliaux, and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. He offers an extended examination of the framing story of Boccaccio's Decameron. Although intended principally as a contribution to the history of medieval literary theory and criticism, Literature as Recreation in the Later Middle Ages makes use of medical, psychological, and sociological insights that lead to a fuller understanding of late medieval secular culture.
Download or read book Medieval Literature written by Elaine M. Treharne and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Very Short Introduction provides a compelling account of the emergence of the earliest literature in Britain and Ireland, including English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, Anglo-Latin and Anglo-Norman. Introducing the reader to some of the greatest poetry, prose and drama ever written, Elaine Treharne discusses the historical and intellectual background to these works, and considers the physical production of the manuscripts and the earliest beginnings of print culture. Covering both well-known texts, such as Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales and the Mabinogion, as well as texts that are much less familiar, such as sermons, saints' lives, lyrics and histories, Treharne discusses major themes such as sin and salvation, kingship and authority, myth and the monstrous, and provides a full, but brief, account of one of the major periods in literary history. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book Anticipatory Materialisms in Literature and Philosophy 1790 1930 written by Jo Carruthers and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-01-25 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anticipatory Materialisms explores nineteenth and early twentieth-century literature thatanticipates and pre-empts the recent philosophical ‘turn’ to materiality and affect. Critical volumes that approach literature via the prism of New Materialism are in the ascendence. This collection stakes a different claim: by engaging with neglected theories of materiality in literary and philosophical works that antedate the twenty-first century ‘turn’ to New Materialism and theories of affect, the project aims to establish a dialogue between recent theoretical considerations of people-world relations in literature and that which has gone before. This project seeks to demonstrate the particular and meaningful ways in which interactions between people and the physical world were being considered in literature between the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The project does not propose an air of finality; indeed, it is our hope that offering provocative and challenging chapters, which approach the subject from various critical and thematic perspectives, the collection will establish a broader dialogue regarding the ways in philosophy and literature have intersected and informed each other over the course of the long nineteenth century.
Download or read book Marketing English Books 1476 1550 written by Alexandra da Costa and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-04 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The monograph series Oxford Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture showcases the plurilingual and multicultural quality of medieval literature and actively seeks to promote research that not only focuses on the array of subjects medievalists now pursue - in literature, theology, and philosophy, in social, political, jurisprudential, and intellectual history, the history of art, and the history of science - but also that combines these subjects productively. It offers innovative studies on topics that may include, but are not limited to, manuscript and book history; languages and literatures of the global Middle Ages; race and the post-colonial; the digital humanities, media and performance; music; medicine; the history of affect and the emotions; the literature and practices of devotion; the theory and history of gender and sexuality, ecocriticism and the environment; theories of aesthetics; medievalism. Marketing English Books is about how the earliest printers moulded demand and created new markets. Until the advent of print, the sale of books had been primarily a bespoke trade, but printers faced a new sales challenge: how to sell hundreds of identical books to individuals, who had many other demands on their purses. This book contends that this forced printers to think carefully about marketing and potential demand, for even if they sold through a middleman—as most did—that wholesaler, bookseller, or chapman needed to be convinced the books would attract customers. Marketing English Books sets out, therefore, to show how markets for a wide range of texts were cultivated by English printers between 1476 and 1550 within a wider, European context: devotional tracts; forbidden evangelical books; romances, gests, and bawdy tales; news; pilgrimage guides, souvenirs and advertisements; and household advice. Through close analysis of paratexts—including title-pages, prefaces, tables of contents, envoys, colophons, and images—the book reveals the cultural impact of printers in this often overlooked period. It argues that while print and manuscript continued alongside each other, developments in the marketing of printed texts began to change what readers read and the place of reading in their lives on a larger scale and at a faster pace than had occurred before, shaping their expectations, tastes, and even their practices and beliefs.
Download or read book Religion and the Early Modern British Marketplace written by Kristin M.S. Bezio and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-29 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion and the Early Modern British Marketplace explores the complex intersection between the geographic, material, and ideological marketplaces through the lens of religious belief and practice. By examining the religiously motivated markets and marketplace practices in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England, Scotland, and Wales, the volume presents religious praxis as a driving force in the formulation and everyday workings of the social and economic markets. Within the volume, the authors address first spiritual markets and marketplaces, discussing the intersection of Puritan and Protestant Ethics with the market economy. The second part addresses material marketplaces, including the marriage market, commercial trade markets, and the post-Reformation Catholic black market. In the third part of the volume, the chapters focus specifically on publication markets and books, including manuscripts and commonplace books, as well as printed volumes and pamphlets. Finally, the volume concludes with an examination of the literary marketplace, with analyses of plays and poems which engage with and depict both spiritual and material markets. Taken as a whole, this collection posits that the "modern" conception of a division between religion and the socioeconomic marketplace was a largely fictional construct, and the chapters demonstrate the depth to which both were integrated in early modern life.
Download or read book Cultural Difference and Material Culture in Middle English Romance written by Dominique Battles and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how the cultural distinctions and conflicts between Anglo-Saxons and Normans originating with the Norman Conquest of 1066 prevailed well into the fourteenth century and are manifest in a significant number of Middle English romances including King Horn, Havelok the Dane, Sir Orfeo, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and others. Specifically, the study looks at how the material culture of these poems (architecture, battle tactic, landscapes) systematically and persistently distinguishes between Norman and Anglo-Saxon cultural identity. Additionally, it examines the influence of the English Outlaw Tradition, itself grounded in Anglo-Saxon resistance to the Norman Conquest, as expressed in specific recurring scenes (disguise and infiltration, forest exile) found in many Middle English romances. In the broadest sense, a significant number of Middle English romances, including some of the most well-read and often-taught, set up a dichotomy of two ruling houses headed by a powerful lord, who compete for power and influence. This book examines the cultural heritage behind each of these pairings to show how poets repeatedly contrast essentially Norman and Anglo-Saxon values and ruling styles.
