English Literature

Sumptuary

Church writers, national and local administrations, and interested observers of society regularly condemned their contemporaries’ extravagant behavior and appearance. Manners, carriage, gestures, diet, drink, clothing, makeup, and hairstyles all formed a complex aggregation thought to be specific to particular estates, classes, genders, sexualities, and occupations (see “Feasts,” p. 190). The pestilences of the later fourteenth… Continue reading Sumptuary

English Literature

Enarratio (Analysis and Exposition of Texts)

Enarratio, the analysis and exposition of texts, was part of the discipline of grammar, itself one of the three major areas of study within the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic or dialectic). Medieval grammar encompassed reading practices from simple grammar as we know it today to sophisticated literary interpretation. Enarratio means literally to lift a… Continue reading Enarratio (Analysis and Exposition of Texts)

English Literature

Plays and Representations

Plays and Representations Lollards often objected to any visual representation of religious subjects, including paintings, illuminations, and sculptures (even crosses) (see “Lollardy Trials,” p. 59, “Censorship,” p. 242, and the “Chaucer portrait: Thomas Hoccleve, Regiment of Princes,” p. 141). Such a rejection of images was part of a more general late medieval desire for unmediated… Continue reading Plays and Representations

English Literature

Quick Sermons

Quick Sermons Audience Reactions to Sermons Medieval theoreticians and practitioners adapted the Classical arts of rhetoric – the artes dictaminis (letter-writing), artes poetriae (poetry), and artes praedicandi (speaking) – to their specific needs. The focus of the artes or ars praedicandi became the province of preachers, lawyers, and rulers, who learned the art of composing… Continue reading Quick Sermons

English Literature

Women: Margaret Paston

Women: Margaret Paston Women in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had greatly varied lives not only because of class differences but also because of geographical location, marital status, religious involvement, and individual experience. Even within the smaller group of aristocratic and middle-class women, one needs to remain aware of differences, especially given the nature of… Continue reading Women: Margaret Paston