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Essays studying the relationship between literariness and form in
medieval texts. The twenty-first century has witnessed the
re-emergence of various kinds of literary formalism, and one
project that characterizes most of these diverse formalisms is the
effort to distinguish what is precisely literary about their
objects of study. The presumed relation between form and the
literary that this project presupposes, however, raises questions
that still need to be addressed. What is it about form that
produces the category of the literary? What precisely is literary
about literary form? Can the literary be defined beyond form? This
volume explores these questions in the historical and geographical
frame of late medieval Britain, across vaunted literary works such
as the Franklin's Tale, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and the
Towneley Shepherds' Plays, and presumed "non-literary" texts, such
as books of hours. By studying texts from a period long priorto
literary formalism - indeed, before any fully articulated theory of
the literary - the essays gathered here aim to rethink the
relationship between form and the literary. Robert J. Meyer-Lee is
Margaret W. PepperdeneDistinguished Scholar-in-Residence at Agnes
Scott College; Catherine Sanok is an Associate Professor of English
and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan. Contributors:
Anke Bernau, Jessica Brantley, Seeta Chaganti, Shannon Gayk,
Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Andrew Klein, Robert J. Meyer-Lee, Ingrid
Nelson, Maura Nolan, Sarah Elliott Novacich, Catherine Sanok, Emily
Steiner, Claire M. Waters.
Essays offering new approaches to the changing forms of medieval
religious masculinity. The complex relationship between masculinity
and religion, as experienced in both the secular and ecclesiastical
worlds, forms the focus for this volume, whose range encompasses
the rabbis of the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmud,and moves via
Carolingian and Norman France, Siena, Antioch, and high and late
medieval England to the eve of the Reformation. Chapters
investigate the creation and reconstitution of different
expressions of masculine identity, from the clerical enthusiasts
for marriage to the lay practitioners of chastity, from crusading
bishops to holy kings. They also consider the extent to which lay
and clerical understandings of masculinity existed in an unstable
dialectical relationship, at times sharing similar features, at
others pointedly different, co-opting and rejecting features of the
other; the articles show this interplay to be more far more
complicated than a simple linear narrative of either increasing
divergence, or of clerical colonization of lay masculinity. They
also challenge conventional historiographies of the adoption of
clerical celibacy, of the decline of monasticism and the gendered
nature of piety. Patricia Cullum is Head of History at the
University of Huddersfield; Katherine J. Lewis is Senior Lecturer
in History at the University of Huddersfield. Contributors: James
G. Clark, P.H. Cullum, Kirsten A. Fenton, Joanna Huntington,
Katherine J. Lewis, Matthew Mesley, Catherine Sanok, Michael L.
Satlow, Rachel Stone, Jennifer D. Thibodeaux, Marita von
Weissenberg
In New Legends of England, Catherine Sanok examines a significant,
albeit previously unrecognized, phenomenon of fifteenth-century
literary culture in England: the sudden fascination with the Lives
of British, Anglo-Saxon, and other native saints. Embodying a
variety of literary forms-from elevated Latinate verse, to popular
traditions such as the carol, to translations of earlier verse
legends into the medium of prose-the Middle English Lives of
England's saints are rarely discussed in relation to one another or
seen as constituting a distinct literary genre. However, Sanok
argues, these legends, when grouped together were an important
narrative forum for exploring overlapping forms of secular and
religious community at local, national, and supranational scales:
the monastery, the city, and local cults; the nation and the realm;
European Christendom and, at the end of the fifteenth century, a
world that was suddenly expanding across the Atlantic. Reading
texts such as the South English Legendary, The Life of St.
Etheldrede, the Golden Legend, and poems about Saints Wenefrid and
Ursula, Sanok focuses especially on the significance of their
varied and often experimental forms. She shows how Middle English
Lives of native saints revealed, through their literary forms,
modes of affinity and difference that, in turn, reflected a
diversity in the extent and structure of medieval communities.
Taking up key questions about jurisdiction, temporality, and
embodiment, New Legends of England presents some of the ways in
which the Lives of England's saints theorized community and
explored its constitutive paradox: the irresolvable tension between
singular and collective forms of identity.
Essays offering new approaches to the changing forms of medieval
religious masculinity. The complex relationship between masculinity
and religion, as experienced in both the secular and ecclesiastical
worlds, forms the focus for this volume, whose range encompasses
the rabbis of the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmud,and moves via
Carolingian and Norman France, Siena, Antioch, and high and late
medieval England to the eve of the Reformation. Chapters
investigate the creation and reconstitution of different
expressions of masculine identity, from the clerical enthusiasts
for marriage to the lay practitioners of chastity, from crusading
bishops to holy kings. They also consider the extent to which lay
and clerical understandings of masculinity existed in an unstable
dialectical relationship, at times sharing similar features, at
others pointedly different, co-opting and rejecting features of the
other; the articles show this interplay to be more far more
complicated than a simple linear narrative of either increasing
divergence, or of clerical colonization of lay masculinity. They
also challenge conventional historiographies of the adoption of
clerical celibacy, of the decline of monasticism and the gendered
nature of piety. P.H. CULLUM is Student Experience Co-ordinator for
Music, Humanities and Media at the University of Huddersfield;
KATHERINE J. LEWIS is Senior Lecturer in History at the University
of Huddersfield. Contributors: James G. Clark, P.H. Cullum, Kirsten
A. Fenton, Joanna Huntington, Katherine J. Lewis, Matthew Mesley,
Catherine Sanok, Michael L. Satlow, Rachel Stone, Jennifer D.
Thibodeaux, Marita von Weissenberg
Her Life Historical Exemplarity and Female Saints' Lives in Late
Medieval England Catherine Sanok "This is a wonderful book. The
argument is original and compelling, and the research thorough and
convincing. It will make an important contribution both to the
specific studies of medieval hagiography and medieval women's
literary culture and to the broader field of medieval
studies."--Jennifer Summit, Stanford University "Elegantly written
and learned."--"Choice" "Sanok's impeccably researched volume . . .
should definitely put an end to the fiction that late medieval
hagiographic literature knew nothing of history."--"Journal of
British Studies" "Her Life Historical" offers a major
reconsideration of one of the most popular narrative forms in late
medieval England--the lives of female saints--and one of the
period's primary modes of interpretation--exemplarity. With
lucidity and insight, Catherine Sanok shows that saints' legends
served as vehicles for complex considerations of historical
difference and continuity in an era of political crisis and social
change. At the same time, they played a significant role in women's
increasing visibility in late medieval literary culture by
imagining a specifically feminine audience. Sanok proposes a new
way to understand exemplarity--the repeated injunction to imitate
the saints--not simply as a prescriptive mode of reading but as an
encouragement to historical reflection. With groundbreaking
originality, she argues that late medieval writers and readers used
religious narrative, and specifically the legends of female saints,
to think about the historicity of their own ethical lives and of
the communities they inhabited. She explains how these narratives
were used in the fifteenth century to negotiate the urgent social
concerns occasioned by political instability and dynastic conflict,
by the threat of heresy and the changing status of public religion,
and by new kinds of social mobility and forms of collective
identity. "Her Life Historical" also offers a fresh account of how
women came to be visible participants in late medieval literary
culture. The expectation that they formed a distinct audience for
saints' lives and moral literature allowed medieval women to
surface in the historical record as book owners, patrons, and
readers. Saints' lives thereby helped to invent the idea of a
gendered audience with a privileged affiliation and a specific
response to a given narrative tradition. Catherine Sanok teaches
English at the University of Michigan. The Middle Ages Series 2007
280 pages 6 x 9 1 illus. ISBN 978-0-8122-3986-7 Cloth $65.00s 42.50
ISBN 978-0-8122-0300-4 Ebook $65.00s 42.50 World Rights Literature,
Religion, Women's/Gender Studies Short copy: "Her Life Historical"
offers a major reconsideration of one of the most popular narrative
forms in late medieval England--the lives of female saints--and one
of the period's primary modes of interpretation, exemplarity.
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