Documentary Culture and the Making of Medieval English Literature

by Emily Steiner

Overview

Emily Steiner describes the rich intersection between legal documents and English literature in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. She argues that documentary culture (including charters, testaments, patents and seals) enabled writers to think in new ways about the conditions of textual production in late Medieval England.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521110532
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	05/07/2009
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature , #50
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Emily Steiner is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the editor (with Candace Barrington) of The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary Production in Late Medieval England (2002).

Table of Contents

Part I. Documentary Poetics: 1. Bracton, Deguileville and the defense of allegory; 2. Lyric, genre, and the material text; Part II. Langland's Documents: 3. Piers Plowman and the archive of salvation; 4. Writing public: documents in the Piers Plowman tradition; Part III. Identity, Heterodoxy, Documents: 5. Lollard community and the Charters of Christ; 6. Lollard rhetoric and the written record: Margery Baxter and William Thorpe; Epilogue: 'My lordys lettyr & the seel of Cawntyrbery'.

Editorial Reviews

"[T]his attentive and intriguing study will appeal to those interested in legal documents in relaion to medieval literature and cultures. Recommended." Choice

From the Publisher