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.

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.

Margaret, saint and 11th-century Queen of the Scots, remains an often-cited yet little-understood historical figure. Keene's analysis of sources in terms of both time and place – including her Life of Saint Margaret , translated for the first time – allows for an informed understanding of the forces that shaped this captivating woman.

No study has been carried out examining the gnostic undercurrents in medieval England. For the first time, Natanela Elias investigates the existence of these gnostic traces, using prominent late medieval English literary works such as Piers Plowman and Confessio Amantis and ultimately shedding light on a previously overlooked religious dimension.

The Argentinian writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) was many things during his life, but what has gone largely unnoticed is that he was a medievalist, and his interest in Germanic medievalism was pervasive throughout his work. This study will consider the medieval elements in Borges creative work and shed new light on his poetry.

Analyzing the renowned Saint Birgitta of Sweden from the perspectives of power, authority, and gender, this probing study investigates how Birgitta went about establishing her influence during the first ten years of her career as a living saint, in 1340–1349.

Bringing the skills of a literary historian to the subject, Brian Moloney considers the genesis of Saint Francis of Assisi's Canticle of Brother Sun to show how it works as a carefully composed work of art. The study examines the saint's life and times, the structure of the poem, the features of its style, and the range of its possible meanings.