This book explores how Medieval and Early Modern writers reconstructed, and also how readers read, the contradictory meanings of "Lady" Wisdom.

This collection of original essays repositions medieval literary studies after an era of historicism. Analyzing the legacy of Marxist and materialist theory on medieval literary criticism, the collection offers new ways of reading texts historically. Drawing upon aesthetic, ethical, and cultural vantage points and methods, these essays demonstrate that a variety of approaches and theories are "historical" and can change what it means to historicize medieval literature. By defining our post-historical moment in medieval English literary studies in terms of new possibilities, this collection will have broad appeal to those interested in the English Middle Ages, history, culture, and reading itself.

Medieval writers such as Chaucer, Abelard, and Langland often overlaid personal story and sacred history to produce a distinct narrative form. The first of its kind, this study traces this widely used narrative tradition to Augustine's two great histories: Confessions and City of God .

This book presents waste as an aesthetic category that introduces an arsy-versy world where detritus is precious. This aesthetic is applied in the second part to etymology, poking through the 'paternal dungheaps' of words, and tracing their origins not to Eden but to Babel, puns, and word play.

This book examines the scholarly construction of Geoffrey Chaucer in different historical eras, and challenges long-standing assumptions to enhance the theoretical dialogue on Chaucer's historical reception.

Early Christians sought miracles from Michael the Archangel and this enigmatic ecumenical figure was the subject of hagiography, liturgical texts, and relics across Western Europe. Entering contemporary debates about angelology, this fascinating study explores the formation and diffusion of the cult of Saint Michael from c. 300-c.800.

This study will significantly further our interpretations of the unique autobiography of Margery Kempe, lay woman turned mystic and visionary. Following the manuscript from a Carthusian monastery through history, Chappell bridges the gaps in our understanding of the transmission of texts from the medieval past to the present.