Parliament and Literature in Late Medieval England
Title | Parliament and Literature in Late Medieval England PDF eBook |
Author | Matthew Giancarlo |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 0 |
Release | 2010-06-24 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 9780521147729 |
Parliament and Literature in Late Medieval England investigates the relationship between the development of parliament and the practice of English poetry in the later fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. During this period, the bureaucratic political culture of parliamentarians, clerks, and scribes overlapped with the artistic practice of major poets like Chaucer, Gower, and Langland, all of whom had strong ties to parliament. Matthew Giancarlo investigates these poets together in the specific context of parliamentary events and controversies, as well as in the broader environment of changing constitutional ideas. Two chapters provide fresh analyses of the parliamentary ideologies that developed from the thirteenth century onward, and four chapters investigate the parliamentary aspects of each poet, as well as the later Lancastrian imitators of Langland. This study demonstrates the importance of the changing parliamentary environs of late medieval England and their centrality to the early growth of English narrative and lyric forms.
Monarchy, State and Political Culture in Late Medieval England
Title | Monarchy, State and Political Culture in Late Medieval England PDF eBook |
Author | Gwilym Dodd |
Publisher | Boydell & Brewer |
Pages | 249 |
Release | 2020 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1903153956 |
New approaches to the political culture of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, considering its complex relation to monarchy and state.
Political Society in Later Medieval England
Title | Political Society in Later Medieval England PDF eBook |
Author | Benjamin Thompson |
Publisher | Boydell & Brewer |
Pages | 282 |
Release | 2015 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1783270306 |
Essays on the connections between politics and society in the middle ages, showing their interdependence.
Political Allegory in Late Medieval England
Title | Political Allegory in Late Medieval England PDF eBook |
Author | Ann W. Astell |
Publisher | Cornell University Press |
Pages | 235 |
Release | 2002-01-01 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 0801474655 |
Ann W. Astell here affords a radically new understanding of the rhetorical nature of allegorical poetry in the late Middle Ages. She shows that major English writers of that era—among them, William Langland, John Gower, Geoffrey Chaucer, and the Gawain-poet—offered in their works of fiction timely commentary on current events and public issues. Poems previously regarded as only vaguely political in their subject matter are seen by Astell to be highly detailed and specific in their veiled historical references, implied audiences, and admonitions. Astell begins by describing the Augustinian and Boethian rhetorical principles involved in the invention of allegory. She then compares literary and historical treatments of key events in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England, finding an astonishing match of allusions and code words, especially those deriving from puns, titles, heraldic devices, and personal cognizances, as well as repeated proverbs, prophecies, and exempla. Among the works she discusses are John Ball's Letters and parts of Piers Plowman, which she presents as two examples of allegorical literature associated with the Peasants' Revolution of 1381; Gower's allegorical representation of the Merciless Parliament of 1388 in Confessio Amantis; and Chaucer's brilliant literary handling of key events in the reign of Richard II. In addition Astell argues for a precise dating of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight between 1397 and 1399 and decodes the work as a political allegory.
Writing to the King
Title | Writing to the King PDF eBook |
Author | David Matthews |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 243 |
Release | 2010-04-01 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 1139483757 |
In the century before Chaucer a new language of political critique emerged. In political verse of the period, composed in Anglo-Latin, Anglo-Norman, and Middle English, poets write as if addressing the king himself, drawing on their sense of the rights granted by Magna Carta. These apparent appeals to the sovereign increase with the development of parliament in the late thirteenth century and the emergence of the common petition, and become prominent, in an increasingly sophisticated literature, during the political crises of the early fourteenth century. However, very little of this writing was truly directed to the king. As David Matthews shows in this book, the form of address was a rhetorical stance revealing much about the position from which writers were composing, the audiences they wished to reach, and their construction of political and national subjects.
Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France
Title | Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France PDF eBook |
Author | Joyce Coleman |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 284 |
Release | 2005-06-30 |
Genre | Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | 9780521673518 |
This book demonstrates that received views on orality and literacy underestimate the importance of public reading in the late Middle Ages.
Shaping the Archive in Late Medieval England
Title | Shaping the Archive in Late Medieval England PDF eBook |
Author | Sarah Elliott Novacich |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 231 |
Release | 2017-03-10 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1107177057 |
Sarah Elliott Novacich explores the ways in which the plots of sacred history were preserved and repurposed in Medieval English literature.