Description
This book bridges the disciplines of literature and history by examining various kinds of literary language as examples of social practice. It is grounded in close textual study which reveals the social positioning of these works and the kinds of ideological work they can be seen to perform. Distinctive alternative readings of texts emerge which challenge received interpretations of literary history and late mediaeval culture. Canonical authors and texts such as Chaucer, Gower, and Pearl are discussed alongside the less familiar: Clanvowe, anonymous alliterative verse, and Wycliffite prose tracts.
This title bridges the disciplines of literature and history by examining various kinds of literary language as examples of social practice. Readings of both English and Latin texts from the late-14th- and early-15th-centuries are grounded in close textual study which reveals the social positioning of these works and the kinds of ideological work they can be seen to perform. Distinctive alternative readings of texts emerge which challenge received interpretations of literary history and late mediaeval culture. Canonical authors and texts such as Chaucer, Gower, and Pearl are discussed alongside the less familiar: Clanvowe, anonymous alliterative verse, and Wycliffite prose tracts. Review: This book should be of interest both to theorists hoping to combine materialist and linguistic approaches, and to scholars seeking insights into such varied texts as Pearl, Wynnere and Wastoure, Geoffrey Chaucer's Manciple's Tale, Nun's Priest's Tale, and Legend of Good Women, John Gower's Chronica Tripertita, Richard the Redeless, the literature of Wycliffism, Mum and the Sothsegger, or The Boke of Cupide. Sixteenth Century Journal ... Barr demonstrates that she can combine a sophisticated theory of discourse with detailed close readings, and that the literature of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries preserves a complex but navigable mixture of discourses. Sixteenth Century Journal [Barr's] theoretical engagement shows a rigor that will satisfy both fellow theorists and some theory-skeptical medievalists; it will probably disappoint historians, but this book should be of great interest to literary scholars of the late Middle Ages in England, and those interested in Barr's linguistic materialism. Sixteenth Century Journal There are many fine insights in this volume, from the analysis of the literary and sociological discontinuities in Wynner and Wastoure to the discussion of the critical treatment of the clergy in Lollard texts (in line with that of the peasants elsewhere), and much more. In sum, the author is to be congratulated for raising so many issues in such a relatively short space. Anglia Barr's command of primary sources is impeccable, and the range of critical references is impressive and very up to date. Medium Aevum By redefining Middle English literary writings as social discourses, Helen Barr connects a variety of late-medieval texts within a social environment newly energized by working-class ambitions and Wycliffite challenges. Medium Aevum
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