Publisher Description

This collection makes a new, profound and far-reaching intervention into the rich yet little-explored terrain between Latin scholastic theory and vernacular literature. Written by a multidisciplinary team of leading international authors, the chapters honour and advance Alastair Minnis's field-defining scholarship. A wealth of expert essays refract the nuances of theory through the medium of authoritative Latin and vernacular medieval texts, providing fresh interpretative treatment to known canonical works while also bringing unknown materials to light.

Author Biography

Ardis Butterfield is Marie Borroff Professor of English and Professor of French and Music at Yale University. Her books include Poetry and Music in Medieval France (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and The Familiar Enemy: Chaucer, Language and Nation in the Hundred Years War (2009), which won the R. H. Gapper prize for French Studies. Ian Johnson is Professor of Medieval Literature and Head of the School of English at the University of St Andrews. The author of The Middle English Life of Christ: Academic Discourse, Translation and Vernacular Theology (2013), he edited Geoffrey Chaucer in Context, (Cambridge University Press, 2019), recognised as a 2020 Choice Outstanding Academic Title, and, with Alastair Minnis, The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, ii, The Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 2005). Andrew Kraebel is Associate Professor of English at Trinity University, Texas. He is the author of Biblical Commentary and Translation in Later Medieval England: Experiments in Interpretation (Cambridge University Press, 2020), which was awarded the Ecclesiastical History Society's book prize.

Table of Contents

The career and contribution of Alastair Minnis Vincent Gillespie; Introduction: criticism, theory and the medieval text Andrew Kraebel; 1. Access through accessus: gateways to learning in a manuscript of school texts Marjorie Curry Woods; 2. Scholastic theory and vernacular knowledge Jocelyn Wogan-Browne; 3. Poetics and biblical hermeneutics in the thirteenth century Gilbert Dahan; 4. Robert holcot and De vetula: beyond Smalley's assessment Ralph Hanna; 5. The inspired commentator: theories of interpretive authority in the writings of Richard rolle Andrew Kraebel; 6. Guitar lessons at blackfriars: Vernacular Medicine and Preachers' Style in Henry Daniel's Liber uricrisiarum Joe Stadolnik; 7. The re-cognition of doctrinal discourse and scholastic literary theory: affordances of ordinatio in Reginald Pecock's Donet and reule of Crysten religioun Ian Johnson; 8. Arts of love and justice: property, women and golden age politics in Le Roman de la Rose Jessica Rosenfeld; 9. The many sides of personification: Rhetorical Theory and Piers Plowman Nicolette Zeeman; 10. Encountering vision: dislocation, disquiet, perplexity in bonaventure, The Squire's Tale and Pearl Mary Carruthers; 11. George Colvile's translation of the consolation of philosophy Ian Cornelius; 12. When did the emotions become political? Medieval Origins and Enlightenment Outcomes Rita Copeland; Bibliography of the Works of Alastair Minnis Gina Marie Hurley and Clara Wild; Bibliography; Index.

Review

'Rich in insights into literate and pedagogic practices throughout the medieval period, generous in its bibliographical reach, this volume is altogether worthy of its distinguished honorand. While directing attention to influential but still under-studied figures such as Bromyard and Holcot, the volume as a whole asks the big questions about relationships between scholasticism and vernacular knowledge, focusing in particular on diverse translations of authority between Latin, French and English. It is also valuable for the nuanced awareness, shared by all its contributors, of the silences and uncertainties surrounding some of the relationships between theory and literary practice in this period. It triumphantly demonstrates the continuing validity and impact of the essay collection in advancing knowledge in a research field of enduring vitality.' Mishtooni Bose, University of Oxford
'Lovers of literary learning appreciate nothing so much as theory that locks into and illuminates literature. Alastair Minnis not only excavated a vast field of such lucid theory, but taught the rest of us how to dig. The wonderfully rich essays by accomplished scholars in this volume bring a great deal more to the surface, to exhilarating effect.' James Simpson, Harvard University

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Reasserts the central importance of medieval scholastic literary theory through a collection of newly-commissioned expert essays.

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