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Historical linguistics --- English language --- Grammar --- anno 1200-1499 --- English literature --- Grammar. --- Readers. --- Readers --- Middle English literature --- Germanic languages

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Next to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, William Langland's Piers Plowman is perhaps the best-known literary picture of fourteenth-century England. Langland's work, more socially concerned and critical than Chaucer's, reflected an age of religious controversy, social upheaval, and political unrest. The World of Piers Plowman puts the reader in touch with the sources that helped shape Langland's somber vision. The representative documents included in this book, often cited in connection with the poem yet difficult to come by, disclose the background of Piers Plowman in social and economic history as well as folklore, art, theology, homilies, religious tractates, and chronicles.The seven sections into which the readings are divided illustrate ideas concerning (1) the heavens, the universal Church, England, and London; (2) material and spiritual abuses; (3) the most influential literary genres of the period; (4) exempla, moral tales from hagiography, sermon literature, and tracts on moral theology; (5) types of practical instruction available to the devout layperson; (6) the multiple meanings in many literary works; and (7) the moment of death, the judgments on the soul, and the torments and rewards of the afterlife.

English literature --- Manners and customs in literature --- Middle English literature --- Langland, William, --- England --- Social life and customs --- Manners and customs in literature.

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Medieval England had a thriving culture of rewriting the Bible in art, drama, and literature in Latin, French and English. Middle English biblical poetry was central to this culture, and although these poems have suffered from critical neglect, sometimes dismissed as mere 'paraphrase', they are rich, innovative and politically engaged. Read in the same gentry and noble households as secular romance, biblical poems borrow and adapt romance plots and motifs, present romance-inflected exotic settings, and share similar concerns: reputation, order, family and marriage.

This book explores six poems from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that retell episodes from the Old Testament: the ballad-like 'Iacob and Iosep', two lives of 'Adam and Eve'; an alliterative version of the Susanna story, the 'Pistel of Susan'; and the Gawain-poet's 'Patience' and 'Cleanness'. Each chapter identifies new sources and influences for the poems, including from biblical glosses and manuscript illustration. The book also investigates the poems' relationships with contemporary cultures of literature and religion, including with secular romance, and offers new readings of each poem and its cultural functions, showing how they bridge the chasm between medieval Christian England and the Jews and pagans of the pre-Christian Mediterranean world. It also considers reading contexts, arguing that the poems and their manuscripts offer hints about the social class and gender of their household audiences.

Religious poetry, English (Middle) --- History and criticism. --- Bible --- In literature. --- Biblical poetry. --- Middle English literature. --- Old Testament. --- biblical retelling. --- cultural functions. --- literary analysis. --- medieval England. --- medieval narrative. --- romance.

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English literature --- Marriage --- 392.4/.5 "04/14" --- Middle English literature --- 392.4/.5 "04/14" Verloving. Huwelijk. Huwelijksgebruiken. Partnerkeuze. Polyandrie. Polygamie. Monogamie--Middeleeuwen --- Verloving. Huwelijk. Huwelijksgebruiken. Partnerkeuze. Polyandrie. Polygamie. Monogamie--Middeleeuwen

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Anchorites and their texts, such as Ancrene Wisse, have recently undergone a reevaluation based on material circumstances, not just theological import. The articles here address a variety of anchoritic or anchoritic-adjacent texts, encompassing guidance literature, hagiographies, miracle narratives, medical discourse, and mystic prose, and spanning in date from the eighth through the fourteenth centuries. Exploring reclusion and materiality, the collection addresses a series of overlapping themes, including the importance of touch, the limits of religious authority, and the role of the senses. Objects, metaphorical and real, embodied and spiritual, populate the pages. These categories are permeable, with flexible and porous boundaries, demonstrating the conflation of ideas, concepts, and manifestations in medieval materiality. In fact, the permeability of these categories demonstrates how materiality can reshape our approach to medieval texts. It leaves room for directions for future study, including the application of material analysis to previously unstudied objects, spaces, and literary artifacts.

Material culture in literature. --- Christian literature, English (Middle) --- History and criticism. --- Christian literature, English --- Christian literature, Middle English --- English Christian literature, Middle --- Middle English Christian literature --- English literature --- Middle English literature. --- anchorites. --- ancrenne wisse. --- embodiment. --- medieval materiality. --- medieval relics. --- reclusion.