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Pearl occupies a special place in the English canon. Together with Gawain and the Green Knight and two minor poems, the late fourteenth-century manuscript came to light after nearly 500 years of being tucked away in one private library or another. While Gawain (which may or may not be by the same hand) received early acclaim as a marvellously-written tale of magic and derring-do, Pearl has yet fully to gain the popularity it richly deserves. In terms of psychological discovery, theological debate, and an unmatched technical brilliance in the joint deployment of alliteration and rhyme, it is a thing of wonder. A dream-vision for almost its entire length, Pearl has a direct relation to the narrators real world. Whether or not the situation it depicts is a fictional one, the poem stands as a commemoration of the deepest personal experience. While the descriptive passages of a heaven-made world are remarkable, the exchange between a grieving man and the pearl he has lost and found pitched almost in terms of a quickfire argument is irresistible. A young female character, taking her time, demolishes a learned male opponent. Yet love speaks throughout, in a Christian presentation of the struggle to relinquish self-will, so that by the deftest of literary strokes the reader finally is one with the dreamer as he comes to terms with the beauty of what must be. This translation meticulously preserves a highly-demanding formal structure and lexical meaning while operating with a freedom which ideally, in this kind of poetry, is that of a conversational song. Dream-poems were not uncommon in the fourteenth century; and Pearl not only is a perfect example of the genre, but offers a poetic experience to reach beyond genre and time.

Pearl (Middle English poem)

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Shows how English responses to the Black Death were hidden in plain sight-as seen in the Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight poems.

Plague in literature. --- Plague --- English poetry --- History and criticism. --- Pearl (Middle English poem) --- Criticism, Textual. --- Bubonic plague --- Yersinia infections

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The politics of Middle English parables examines the dynamic intersection of fiction, theology and social practice in late-medieval England. Parables occupy a prominent place in Middle English literature, appearing in dream visions and story collections as well as in lives of Christ and devotional treatises. While most scholarship approaches the translated stories as stable vehicles of Christian teaching, this book highlights the many variations and points of conflict across Middle English renditions of the same story. In parables related to labour, social inequality, charity and penance, the book locates a creative theological discourse through which writers attempted to re-construct Christian belief and practice. Analysis of these diverse retellings reveals not what a given parable meant in a definitive sense but rather how Middle English parables inscribe the ideologies, power structures and cultural debates of late-medieval Christianity.

Parables. --- English literature --- Parables in literature. --- Parables --- British literature --- Inklings (Group of writers) --- Nonsense Club (Group of writers) --- Order of the Fancy (Group of writers) --- Exempla --- Homiletical illustrations --- Tales --- Allegories --- Fables --- Middle English. --- History and criticism. --- Bible. --- Bible --- Devotional literature, English (Middle). --- Devotional literature, English (Middle) --- Literature and literary studies. --- Literary studies: classical, early and medieval. --- LITERARY CRITICISM / Medieval. --- Biography, Literature & Literary studies --- Devotional literature, English --- Devotional literature, Middle English --- English devotional literature, Middle --- Middle English devotional literature --- Literature: history & criticism --- Literary studies: general --- Literary studies: ancient, classical & medieval.

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Coming upon the text of a document such as a charter or a letter inserted into the fabric of a medieval chronicle and quoted in full or at length, modern readers might well assume that the chronicler is simply doing what good historians have always done—that is, citing his source as evidence. Such documentary insertions are not ubiquitous in medieval historiography, however, and are in fact particularly characteristic of the history-writing produced by the Angevins in England and Northern France in the later twelfth century.In History and the Written Word, Henry Bainton puts these documentary gestures center stage in an attempt to understand what the chroniclers were doing historiographically, socially, and culturally when they transcribed a document into a work of history. Where earlier scholars who have looked at the phenomenon have explained this increased use of documents by considering the growing bureaucratic state and an increasing historiographical concern for documentary evidence, Bainton seeks to resituate these histories, together with their authors and users, within literate but sub-state networks of political power. Proposing a new category he designates'literate lordship'to describe the form of power with which documentary history-writing was especially concerned, he shows how important the vernacular was in recording the social lives of these literate lords and how they found it a particularly appropriate medium through which to record their roles in history.Drawing on the perspectives of modern and medieval narratology, medieval multilingualism, and cultural memory, History and the Written Word argues that members of an administrative elite demonstrated their mastery of the rules of literate political behavior by producing and consuming history-writing and its documents.

English literature --- Literacy --- History and criticism. --- History. --- Great Britain --- History --- Historiography. --- Sources. --- 091:930 --- 091:930.22 --- 091 <41> --- 091 <44> --- 091 "10/1249" --- Illiteracy --- Education --- General education --- 091:930.22 Handschriftenkunde. Handschriftencatalogi-:-Oorkonden. Cartularia. Diplomatiek --- Handschriftenkunde. Handschriftencatalogi-:-Oorkonden. Cartularia. Diplomatiek --- 091 <41> Handschriftenkunde. Handschriftencatalogi--Verenigd Koninkrijk van Groot-Brittannië en Noord-Ierland --- Handschriftenkunde. Handschriftencatalogi--Verenigd Koninkrijk van Groot-Brittannië en Noord-Ierland --- 091:930 Handschriften i.v.m. geschiedenis --- Handschriften i.v.m. geschiedenis --- 091 "10/1249" Handschriftenkunde. Handschriftencatalogi--11e-13e eeuw. Periode 1000-1249 ('hoge middeleeuwen') --- Handschriftenkunde. Handschriftencatalogi--11e-13e eeuw. Periode 1000-1249 ('hoge middeleeuwen') --- 091 <44> Handschriftenkunde. Handschriftencatalogi--Frankrijk --- Handschriftenkunde. Handschriftencatalogi--Frankrijk --- History and criticism --- E-books --- Literacy. --- Middle English. --- 1100-1500. --- England. --- Great Britain. --- Historiography --- Sources