Worlds Made Flesh: Chronicle Histories and Medieval Manuscript Culture

by Lauryn Mayer

Overview

This book focuses on the use of the past in two senses. First, it looks at the way in which medieval texts from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries discussed the past: how they presented history, what kinds of historical narratives they employed, and what anxieties gathered around the practice of historiography. Second, this study examines twentieth-century interactions with this textual past, and the problems that have arisen for critics trying to negotiate this radically different textual culture. Lauryn Mayer examines chronicle histories that have been largely ignored by scholars, bringing these neglected texts into dialogue with contemporaneous canonical works such as Troilus and Criseyde, The House of Fame, the Morte Darthur, Beowulf, and The Battle of Maldon.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415970600
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	05/11/2004
Series:	Studies in Medieval History and Culture , #28
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Lauryn Mayer received her Ph.D. in English from Brown University. She currently teaches in the Department of English at Washington and Jefferson College.

Table of Contents

Introduction List of Manuscripts and Abbreviations Chapter One: The Metrical Chronicle Family and Manuscript Practice Chapter Two: The Manuscript Challenge to Ideas of Medieval Nationalism Chapter Three: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Comforts of Heroic Poetry Chapter Four: Caxton, Chaucer, and the Creation of an Auctor Notes Bibliography Index