The Medieval British Literature Handbook

by Kline, Daniel T.

• ISBN13: 9780826494092
• ISBN10: 0826494099
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-08-25
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

The Medieval British Literature Handbook is an accessible, comprehensive introduction to the literature and culture of the Middle Ages, focusing on Middle English from 1300-1500. It offers students essential information for beginning a course and provides expert guidance for developing advanced skills.

Author Biography

Daniel T. Kline is Associate Professor of English at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, USA. He is editor of the Electronic Canterbury Tales.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. xvii
List of Illustrations	p. xix
General Editors' Introduction	p. xxi
Introduction	p. 1
The Lure of the Medieval	p. 1
Dreaming the Middle Ages	p. 3
Approaching the Middle English Period	p. 4
Redefining the Period	p. 5
Extending the Medieval	p. 8
Expanding the Canon	p. 11
Theorizing the Texts	p. 13
Mapping New Approaches	p. 16
Outline of the Handbook	p. 18
Historical Context for Middle English Literature	p. 23
Overview	p. 23
When Did Middle English Literature Begin?	p. 24
Historical and Political Change after 1066	p. 24
Artistic and Linguistic Change after 1066	p. 25
The Crusades and the Expansion of Church Power	p. 26
The Power of the Church at Home: From Thomas Becket to the Magna Carta	p. 27
Crisis in the Church Abroad: The Great Schism	p. 28
Crisis in the Church at Home: Lollardy	p. 29
Famine and Plague	p. 31
Labour Unrest and the Peasants' Revolt	p. 32
The Hundred Years' War	p. 33
English Monarchy and the Deposition of Richard II	p. 34
The Wars of the Roses and the Transition to the Early Modern Period	p. 36
Middle English Timeline, 1066-1492	p. 40
Literary and Cultural Contexts: Major Figures, Institutions, Topics, Events, Movements	p. 49
Setting the Context	p. 51
The Languages of Britain	p. 52
Textual Communities and the Medieval Book	p. 52
Persons and Texts, Movements and Events:	p. 54
Adam Easton	p. 54
Alliterative Morte Arthure	p. 54
Amherst Manuscript, British Library Additional 37, 790	p. 55
Anchoress	p. 55
Ancrene Wisse (Ancrene Riwle) and the Katherine Group	p. 55
Arthurian Literature and the 'Matter of Britain'	p. 55
Archbishop Thomas Arundel (1353-1414)	p. 56
Auchinleck Manuscript	p. 56
The Bayeux Tapestry	p. 57
The Bible	p. 57
Birgitta of Sweden (d.1373)	p. 57
Giovanni Boccaccio	p. 57
Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy	p. 58
Catherine of Siena (1347-80), The Orcherd of Syon	p. 58
Cattle Raid of Cooley/Train bo Caulgne (c.1150)	p. 58
William Caxton (c. 1422-92)	p. 58
Chanson de Roland and the 'Matter of France'	p. 59
Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340-1400)	p. 59
Children and Childhood	p. 59
Christina of Markyate (c.1100.55)	p. 60
Christine de Pizan (1363-c. 1434)	p. 60
Cloud of Unknowing	p. 61
Confessional Manuals	p. 62
Contemplative Literature	p. 62
Corpus Christi Plays	p. 62
Courtesy and Conduct Literature	p. 62
Courtly Love	p. 63
Dante Alighieri	p. 63
Didactic Literature	p. 63
Double Monastery	p. 64
Dream Vision	p. 64
Ellesmere Manuscript	p. 64
Fall of Troy and the 'Matter of Troy'	p. 64
Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain	p. 65
John Gower (c. 1330-1408)	p. 65
Guillaume de Deguileville (b. c. 1294), The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man	p. 65
Henry IV (1367-1413)	p. 65
Henry V (1387-1422)	p. 65
Henry VI (1421-71)	p. 66
Walter Hilton (d. 1396), The Ladder of Perfection	p. 66
Histories	p. 66
Thomas Hoccleve (c. 1368-1426), The Regiment of Princes	p. 66
James I of Scotland (1394-1437), The Kingis Quair	p. 67
Julian of Norwich (c. 1342-1416), Showing of Love	p. 67
Margery Kempe (d. after 1438), The Book of Margery Kempe	p. 67
William Langland, Piers Plowman	p. 68
Lollardy	p. 68
Nicholas Love (c. 1410), Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ	p. 68
Luttrell Psalter (c. 1335)	p. 69
John Lydgate (c. 1370-1451)	p. 69
Lyric Verse	p. 69
Mabinogion	p. 69
Sir Thomas Malory (C. 1405-71), Le Morte d' Arthur	p. 70
Sir John De Mandeville, Travels	p. 70
Marie de France, Lais	p. 70
Mirk's Festial	p. 70
Monastic Orders	p. 70
Mystery, Morality and Miracle Plays	p. 71
Poston Letters	p. 71
The Pearl-Poet	p. 72
Francesco Petrarch	p. 72
Pilgrim and Travel Literature	p. 72
Marguerite Porete (d. 1310), The Mirror of Simple Souls	p. 74
Promptorium Parvulorum	p. 74
Richard II (1367-1400)	p. 74
Richard Rolle (c. 1300-49)	p. 74
Roman de la Rose, Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun	p. 75
Romance	p. 75
Saint's Legends (Hagiography)	p. 75
Schools and Literacy	p. 76
The Scottish Chaucerians	p. 76
Sermon Literature	p. 76
Three Estates	p. 76
Universities	p. 77
Thomas Usk (d. 1388), The Testament of Love	p. 77
Virginity	p. 77
Voyage of Bran and Voyage of St. Brendan	p. 78
Wars of the Roses (1455-89)	p. 78
Nigel Wireker (d. c. 1200), Speculum Stultorum	p. 78
John Wyclif (d. 1384)	p. 78
Wynnere and Wastoure	p. 79
Case Studies in Reading I Key Primary Literay Texts	p. 82
Marie de France, Lanval	p. 83
The Court Setting	p. 84
The Ladies' Approach	p. 85
The Critique of the Arthurian Court	p. 86
The 1381 Rovolt	p. 87
Froissart, Chroniques	p. 87
Gower, Vox clamantis and Chaucer, the Nun's Priest's Tale	p. 88
William Langland, Piers Plowman	p. 89
The Anonimalle Chronicle	p. 92
Comparing Accounts of 1381	p. 92
Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe	p. 93
Margery and the Performative	p. 94
Hegemony: Gender and Latinity	p. 95
Kempe's Personal Crisis	p. 96
Kemp's Public Spirituality	p. 97
Kempe's Confrontations with Authority	p. 99
Writing The Book of Margery Kempe	p. 100
Mankind and The Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge	p. 101
The Tretise and Wycliffite Concerns	p. 102
Mankind's Characters	p. 104
Structure and Subverstion	p. 105
Playing and Pedagogy	p. 106
Case Studies in Reading II: Key Literary and Theoretical Texts	p. 109
Lee Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History (1991)	p. 110
History and Subjectivity: The Place of Texts	p. 111
History and Historicity: The Problem of Origins	p. 112
The Miller and the Pardoner	p. 113
Carolyn Dinshaw, Chaucer's Sexual Poetics (1989) and Getting Medieval (1999)	p. 114
Gendered Hermeneutics	p. 114
Dinshaw's Pardoner	p. 116
Queering the Medieval	p. 117
The Touch of the Queer	p. 118
Karma Lochrie, Covert Operations (1999) and Heterosyncrasies (2005)	p. 119
Sodomy and Secrecy	p. 119
Secrecy and Gender	p. 120
Perversion and the Unnatural	p. 121
Heternormativity and Heterosyncrasy	p. 122
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Of Giants (1999)	p. 123
The Body and the Giant	p. 124
Monstrosity and Extimité	p. 125
Patricia Clare Ingham and Michelle Warren, Postcolonial Moves (2003) and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, The Postcolonial Middle Ages (2000)	p. 126
Medieval Colonialism and the Modern West	p. 127
Medieval Intertemporality	p. 128
Contrapuntal Histories	p. 130
Key Critics, Concepts and Topics	p. 133
A History of Early Criticism	p. 134
The Relationship between History and Literature	p. 136
Key Concepts and Topics in Contemporary Medieval Literary Criticism:	p. 137
Agency	p. 137
Alterity and Racial/Ethnic Difference	p. 138
The Body	p. 138
Gender	p. 139
Identity Formation	p. 140
Language and Literature	p. 141
Location, Territorialization, Cartography	p. 141
Marginal Voices	p. 142
The Marvellous/Monstrous	p. 142
Orality and Textuality	p. 143
'History' and the Past	p. 144
Performance and spectacle	p. 145
Transmission and Authority	p. 146
Critics:	p. 147
David Aers	p. 147
Sarah Beckwith	p. 147
Louise O. Aranye Fredenburg	p. 148
Bruce W. Holsinger	p. 148
Stephen Knight	p. 148
Steven F. Kruger	p. 149
Miri Rubin	p. 149
Martin Stevens	p. 149
Paul Strohm	p. 150
Changes in Critical Responses and Approaches	p. 152
Literary Theory and Medieval Texts	p. 153
Challenging the Centrality of Chaucer	p. 155
Testing the Tenets of Theory	p. 156
Structuralism and Poststucturalism	p. 157
Questioning the Author	p. 158
Deconstructing the Text	p. 159
Feminism and Gender Studies	p. 160
Feminists and Medieval Texts	p. 161
The Feminine Other in Medieval Culture	p. 162
Gender, Identity and Queer Studies	p. 163
Rereading Aristocratic Masculinity	p. 164
Gender and Religious Difference	p. 165
Marxism to New Historicism	p. 166
Marxism Against New Criticism	p. 166
British Marxism	p. 167
Synthesizing the Political and Literary	p. 168
Postcolonial Criticism	p. 170
Premodern Postcolonialism	p. 171
Romance, Religion and Nation	p. 172
Psychoanalytic Theory	p. 173
City, Desire and Sacrifice	p. 174
Emerging New Approaches	p. 175
Ecocriticism	p. 175
Theology and Theoy	p. 176
Vernacular Theology	p. 177
Lollardy and Literary	p. 177
Interdisciplinariry and the New Synthesis	p. 178
Metamedievalism	p. 180
Reception Theory and Medieval Texts	p. 180
Conclusion	p. 181
Changes in the Canon	p. 184
'Authoritative' Texts	p. 184
The Traditional Canon of Middle English Literature	p. 185
The Impact of Feminism and the Expansion of the Canon	p. 186
The Development of Feminist Criticism	p. 187
Jualian of Norwich and Margery Kempe	p. 188
New Historicism and Blurring the History/Literature Divide	p. 189
Wycliffe and Lollardy	p. 190
From Literature to Texts	p. 191
Rethinking the Boundaries and Fiftheenth-Century Literature	p. 192
Osbern Bokenham and Thomas Hoccleve	p. 193
Multingualism, International Contexts and Postcolonial Concerns	p. 194
England and the Continent	p. 195
Revising the New Orthodoxy	p. 196
Issues of Sexuality, Gender and Ethnicity	p. 199
Christine de Pizan and the Querelle de la Rose	p. 200
The Place of Chaucer's Wife of Bath	p. 201
Feminism and Feminisms	p. 202
Anglo-American Feminism	p. 203
Gynocriticism	p. 203
Medieval Women's Writing	p. 205
French Feminism	p. 206
Écriture Féminine	p. 206
Authorship, Audience and Authority	p. 207
Legitimizing Mysticism	p. 208
Third Wave and Third World Feminism	p. 209
Critiquing Essentialism	p. 210
Gender Studies	p. 211
The Sex/Gender System	p. 212
Medieval Bodies	p. 212
Medieval Drag	p. 213
Queering Theory	p. 214
Foucault's Repressive Hypothesis'	p. 215
The Place of Chaucer's Pardoner	p. 216
Race Studies	p. 218
Medieval Race and Cultural Difference	p. 220
Crusaders and Conversion	p. 220
Postcolonial Studies	p. 221
Saracens and Others	p. 222
Intersections: Race, Gender and Sexuality	p. 223
Mapping the Current Critical Landscape	p. 226
Poststruralism and Post/structuralism	p. 226
Exegetical Criticism	p. 228
Donaldson's Critique	p. 228
The Influences of Structuralism	p. 229
The Subject and Subjectivity	p. 230
Materialist Criticism	p. 231
Marxism	p. 231
New Historicism and Cultural Materialism	p. 232
Deconstruction	p. 234
Derrida: Interpreting Intepretations	p. 234
II n'y a pas de hors-texte	p. 235
Gender and Politics	p. 235
The Ethical Turn: From Discipline to Responsibility	p. 236
Literature and Commentary	p. 238
Chaucer's Boethius and the Violence of Philosophy	p. 239
Violence and Religion: Towards Anti-Sacrifical Readings	p. 241
Midrash and Allegory	p. 242
Reading in the Shadow of the Shoah	p. 244
Glossary	p. 247
Appendix: Teaching Medieval British Literature into the Twenty-First Century Susan Oldrieve with Joanna Wright Smith	p. 250
Notes on Contributors	p. 251
References	p. 253
Index	p. 291
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