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"Brown stresses the centrality of religious works to any discussion of the era, including texts outside the traditional canons: government and legal documents; instructional, confessional, devotional, mystical, and contemplative works; the writings of critics, dissenters, and Lollards. The collection does not accept traditional hegemonies, aristocracy, church hierarchy, courtly culture, and linguistic homogeneity. For example, essays look at the boundary between high and popular romance as blurred and artificial; the fin amour codes of love-conduct as having minimal restraint on violent chivalric pursuit of martial prowess; the concepts of masculinity, Christianity, European identity, and whiteness as dominant paradigms defining and marginalizing women and members of all nonwhite races; the violence deemed permissible for excluding these groups. In short, these thorough, engaging essays decertify many canonical certainties...Highly Recommended." Choice "Another grand project that combines breadth and depth … A highly eminent collection of thirty-eight contributions ranges over a variety of topics." Medium Aevum "There is plenty here for everybody, and all of it written in a way accessible to the general reader as well as to the student, of fellow specialist." Reference Reviews. Intro -- A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture C.1350-C.1500 -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Notes on Contributors -- Acknowledgements -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- PART I Overviews -- 1. Critical Approaches -- 2. English Society in the Later Middle Ages: Deference, Ambition and Conflict -- 3. Religious Authority and Dissent -- 4. City and Country, Wealth and Labour -- 5. Women's Voices and Roles -- PART II The Production and Reception of Texts -- 6. Manuscripts and Readers -- 7. From Manuscript to Modern Text -- 8. Translation and Society -- PART III Language and Literature -- 9. The Languages of Medieval Britain -- 10. The Forms of Speech -- 11. The Forms of Verse -- PART IV Encounters with Other Cultures -- 12. England and France -- 13. Britain and Italy: Trade, Travel, Translation -- 14. England's Antiquities: Middle English Literature and the Classical Past -- 15. Jews, Saracens, 'Black Men', Tartars: England in a World of Racial Difference -- PART V Special Themes -- 16. War and Chivalry -- 17. Literature and Law -- 18. Images -- 19. Love -- PART VI Genres -- 20. Middle English Romance -- 21. Writing Nation: Shaping Identity in Medieval Historical Narratives -- 22. Dream Poems -- 23. Lyric -- 24. Literature of Religious Instruction -- 25. Mystical and Devotional Literature -- 26. Accounts of Lives -- 27. Medieval English Theatre: Codes and Genres -- 28. Morality and Interlude Drama -- PART VII Readings -- 29. York Mystery Plays -- 30. The Book of Margery Kempe -- 31. Julian of Norwich -- 32. Piers Plowman -- 33. Subjectivity and Ideology in the Canterbury Tales -- 34. John Gower and John Lydgate: Forms and Norms of Rhetorical Culture -- 35. Thomas Hoccleve, La Male Regle -- 36. Discipline and Relaxation in the Poetry of Robert Henryson -- 37. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
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