Description
Book SynopsisAnne Middleton''s essays have been among the most vigorous, learned, and influential in the field of medieval English literature. Their ''crux-busting'' energies have illuminated local obscurities with generous learning lightly wielded. Their historically- and theoretically-informed meditations on the nature of poetic discourse traced how the generation of Chaucer and Langland devised a category of the literary that could embody a ethos of engaged, worldly consensus and make that consensus available to imaginative and rational consideration. And their reflections on the enterprise of literary study found a rational way, free of cant, to understand the work of the literary scholar. This volume reprints eight essays: 'The Idea of Public Poetry in the Reign of Richard II,' 'Chaucer''s ''New Men'' and the Good of Literature in the Canterbury Tales,' 'The Physician''s Tale and Love''s Martyrs: ''Ensamples Mo than Ten'' as a Method in the Canterbury Tales,' 'The Clerk and His Tale: Some Lite
Table of ContentsContents: Publications of Anne Middleton; Introduction, Steven Justice; The idea of public poetry in the age of Richard II; Chaucer's 'new men' and the good of literature in the Canterbury Tales; The Physician's Tale and love's martyrs: 'ensamples mo than ten' as a method in the Canterbury Tales; The Clerk and his tale: some literary contexts; Playing the plowman: legends of 14th-century authorship; Narration and the invention of experience: episodic form in Piers Plowman; Making a good end: John But as a reader of Piers Plowman; William Langland's 'kynde name': authorial signature and social identity in late 14th-century England; Life in the margins, or, what's an annotator to do?
