Lies, Slander and Obscenity in Medieval English Literature: Pastoral Rhetoric and the Deviant Speaker

Lies, Slander and Obscenity in Medieval English Literature: Pastoral Rhetoric and the Deviant Speaker

by Edwin David Craun
Lies, Slander and Obscenity in Medieval English Literature: Pastoral Rhetoric and the Deviant Speaker

Lies, Slander and Obscenity in Medieval English Literature: Pastoral Rhetoric and the Deviant Speaker

by Edwin David Craun

Hardcover

$108.00 
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Overview

Drawing on manuscript sources, this book examines how the medieval clergy developed the authority and persuasive force to attempt to govern the day-to-day speech of Western Christians. It explores, for the first time, how Chaucer, Langland, Gower and the "Patience" poet presented and judged these attempts to label some political, social and private speech as deviant and destructive—as lying, slander, blasphemy and other Sins of the Tongue.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780521496902
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication date: 06/16/1997
Series: Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature , #31
Pages: 272
Product dimensions: 6.34(w) x 9.29(h) x 0.87(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. The pastoral movement and deviant speech: major texts; 2. The lies of the Fall, the tongues of Pentecost: typing and converting the deviant speaker; 3. Exemplifying deviant speech: murmur in Patience; 4. Confessing the deviant speaker: verbal deception in the Confessio Amantis; 5. Reforming deviant social practices: turpiloquium/scurrilitas in the B Version of Piers Plowman; 6. Restraining the deviant speaker: Chaucer's Manciple and Parson; Bibliography; Index.
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