Translations of Authority in Medieval English Literature

Erscheinungsjahr 2009
ISBN: 978-0-521-51594-8
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 288 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 574 g

In Translations of Authority in Medieval English Literature, leading critic Alastair Minnis presents the fruits of a long-term engagement with the ways in which crucial ideological issues were deployed in vernacular texts. The concept of the vernacular is seen as possessing a value far beyond the category of language - as encompassing popular beliefs and practices which could either confirm or contest those authorized by church and state institutions. Minnis addresses the crisis for vernacular translation precipitated by the Lollard heresy; the minimal engagement with Nominalism in late fourteenth-century poetry; Langland's views on indulgences; the heretical theology of Walter Brut; Margery Kempe's self-promoting biblical exegesis; and Chaucer's tales of suspicious saints and risible relics. These discussions disclose different aspects of 'vernacularity', enabling a fuller understanding of its complexity and potency.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Minnis, Alastair

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturkritik: Hermeneutik und Interpretation
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction; 1. Absent glosses: the trouble with Middle English hermeneutics; 2. Looking for a sign: the quest for Nominalism in Ricardian poetry; 3. Piers' protean pardon: Langland on the letter and spirit of indulgences; 4. Making bodies: confection and conception in Walter Brut's vernacular theology; 5. Spiritualizing marriage: Margery Kempe's allegories of female authority; 6. Chaucer and the relics of vernacular religion.

Über Autor(innen)

Minnis, Alastair
Alastair Minnis is the Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of English at Yale University. Recent authored works include Magister Amoris: The 'Roman de la Rose' and Vernacular Hermeneutics (2001); and Fallible Authors: Chaucer's Pardoner and Wife of Bath (2007). In addition, he has edited or co-edited fourteen other books, including (with Ian Johnson) The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, vol. 2: The Middle Ages (2005). He is also the General Editor of Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature.