The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English

by Elaine Treharne (Editor), Greg Walker (Editor)

Overview

The study of medieval literature has experienced a revolution in the last two decades, which has reinvigorated many parts of the discipline and changed the shape of the subject in relation to the scholarship of the previous generation. 'New' texts (laws and penitentials, women's writing, drama records), innovative fields and objects of study (the history of the book, the study of space and the body, medieval masculinities), and original ways of studying them (the Sociology of the Text, performance studies) have emerged. This has brought fresh vigour and impetus to medieval studies, and impacted significantly on cognate periods and areas. The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English brings together the insights of these new fields and approaches with those of more familiar texts and methods of study, to provide a comprehensive overview of the state of medieval literature today. It also returns to first principles in posing fundamental questions about the nature, scope, and significance of the discipline, and the directions that it might take in the next decade.
The Handbook contains 44 newly commissioned essays from both world-leading scholars and exciting new scholarly voices. Topics covered range from the canonical genres of Saints' lives, sermons, romance, lyric poetry, and heroic poetry; major themes including monstrosity and marginality, patronage and literary politics, manuscript studies and vernacularity are investigated; and there are close readings of key texts, such as Beowulf, Wulf and Eadwacer, and Ancrene Wisse and key authors from AElfric to Geoffrey Chaucer, Langland, and the Gawain Poet.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198798088
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	11/07/2017
Series:	Oxford Handbooks
Pages:	790
Sales rank:	899,826
Product dimensions:	9.60(w) x 6.70(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Elaine Treharne, Roberta Bowman Denning Professor of Humanities Professor of English, and, by Courtesy, of German Studies, Stanford,Greg Walker, Masson Regius Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature, The University of Edinburgh

Greg Walker is Regius Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. Prior to that he was Professor of early-modern literature and culture at the University of Leicester. He has written extensively on the drama, poetry, and prose, and the political and religious history of the late medieval period and the sixteenth century in England and Scotland. He has edited the Oxford Anthology of Tudor Drama and is co-editor with Thomas Betteridge of The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Drama.

Elaine Treharne is Roberta Bowman Denning Professor of Humanities and Professor of English, and, by Courtesy, of German Studies at Stanford University. Elaine was previously Professor of Early English at Florida State University and Visiting Professor of Medieval Literature at the University of Leicester. She has published extensively on Old and Middle English literature and particularly religious prose, and she works on medieval manuscripts and their contents, focusing recently on the architextuality of early books.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations xi

List of Contributors xii

Prologue

Speaking of the Medieval Elaine Treharne 1

Part I Literary Production

1 Books and Manuscripts A.S.G. Edwards 17

2 Textual Copying and Transmission Orietta Da Rold 33

3 The Professionalization of Writing Simon Horobin 57

4 Writing, Authority, and Bureaucracy Nicholas Perkins 68

5 The Impact of Print: The Perceived Worth of the Printed Book in England, 1476-1575 Elizabeth Evenden-Kenyon 90

Part II Literary Consumption

6 Literature and the Cultural Elites Ralph Hanna 111

7 The Verse of Heroes Jayne Carroll 133

8 Insular Romance Siâ Echard 160

9 A York Primer and its Alphabet: Reading Women in a Lay Household Nicola McDonald 181

10 Performing Communities: Civic Religious Drama John J. McGavin 200

Part III Literaure, Clerical and Lay

11 Change and Continuity: The English Sermon before 1250 Bella Millett 221

12 Authorizing Female Piety Diane Watt 240

13 Visions and Visionaries Andrew Galloway 256

14 Writing, Heresy, and the Anticlerical Muse Mishtooni Bose 276

15 Acquiring Wisdom: Teaching Texts and the Lore of the People Daniel Anlezark 297

Part IV Literary Realities

16 The Yorkshire Partisans and the Literature of Popular Discontent Andrew Prescott 321

17 The Gothic Turn and Twelfth-Century English Chronicles Thomas A. Bredehoft 353

18 Anti-Social Reform: Writing Rebellion Stephen Kelly 370

19 Secular Medieval Drama Elisabeth Dutton 384

20 'Sweit Rois… Delytsum Lyllie': Metaphorical and Real Flowers in Medieval Verse Gillian Rudd 395

Part V Complex Identities

21 Authority, Constraint, and the Writing of the Medieval Self Kathryn Kerby-Fulton 413

22 Complex Identities: Selves and Others Kathy Lavezzo 434

23 The Chosen People: Spiritual Identities Samantha Zacher 457

24 Individuality Alcuin Blamires 478

25 Emergent Englishness Jacqueline Fay 496

Part VI Literary Place, Spae, and Time

26 Regions and Communities Helen Fultom 515

27 The City and the Text: London Literature Alison Wiggins 540

28 Reading Comminities CWendy Scase 557

29 Scottish Writing Elizabeth Elliott 574

30 Places of the Imagination: The Gawain-Poet Thorlac Turville-Petre 594

Part VII Literary Journeys

31 Pilgrimages, Travel Writing, and the Medieval Exotic Jeffrey Jerome Cohen 611

32 'Britain': Originary Myths and the Stories of Peoples Anke Bernau 629

33 Maps and Margins: Other Lands, Other Peoples Alfred Hiatt 649

34 Monsters and the Exotic in Medieval England Asa Simon Mittman Susan M. Kim 677

35 Spiritual Quest and Social Space: Texts of Hard Travel for God on Earth and in the Heart Mary Baine Campbell 707

Epilogue

When did 'the Medieval' End? Retrospection, Foresight, and the End(s) of the English Middle Ages Greg Walker 725

Index of Manuscripts 739

Index 742

Editorial Reviews

"Elisabeth Dutton's chapter 'Secular Drama' in The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English...provides an examination of the nature of secular medievaldrama in England against the dominant force of the mystery cycles, which have hitherto garnered the lion's share of critical attention." — Daisy Black and Sarah Brazil, The English Association

From the Publisher