Category: English Literature

English Literature

Women: Margaret Paston

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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 writings about women from clerical, literary, legal, and historical sources. Many women of the nobility … Read the rest

English Literature

English Literature Poems

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Poem 1 “Miracle of the Boy Singer”

Bodleian Library MS English Poetry a.1, fol. 124v (Vernon) The Vernon manuscript is the longest and largest surviving volume of Middle English writings; it was originally over 420 vellum leaves long, the pages ruled in 2 or 3 columns with over 80 lines of text each. The contents include passages from the South English Legendary, Northern Homilies, miracles of our Lady, poems, and … Read the rest

English Literature

Book History Journal

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Book History Journal

Larger book collections in the Middle English period tended to be eclectic and restricted to wealthier individuals because of their price, but even lessmoneyed people frequently owned one or more volumes. A newly commissioned luxury book could cost as much as 35 pounds, a simpler missal 20 shillings. Nobility and courtiers often had collections of between five and fifteen books: Bibles, primers, and other religious writings, historical … Read the rest

English Literature

Saracens

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Saracens

Medieval Christians’ views of Islam developed throughout the Middle Ages, beginning with concerns about easterners’ military and political conquests and developing into a greater understanding of some of the tenets of Islam. This second phase began due to contact with Muslims during the crusades (1096, 1146, 1189, 1228) and the arrival of Arab philosophy and science in the West via Spain in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This familiarity … Read the rest

English Literature

Lechers and Sodomites

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Lechers and Sodomites

After the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, the classification of sins into groups and degrees of severity had even more pragmatic consequences. Drawing on earlier canon law, a principal focus of the pastoral function became the redemption of sinners through sermon and confession, and new compendia of writings on the priest’s role in confession as well as practical instructional manuals for administering confession appeared. Discussions of sexuality … Read the rest

English Literature

God’s Unknowability

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God’s Unknowability

Original compositions of contemplative, or mystical, writings in English as well as translations of continental works into the vernacular flourished in the late-fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. From Richard Rolle in the 1340s and even during the persecutions of Lollards in the 1400s (see “Lollardy Trials,” p. 59), English writers and translators explored modes of spirituality that centered around ways of approaching God and composed descriptions of union with … Read the rest

English Literature

Chastity, Marriage, Widowhood, and Virginity

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Chastity, Marriage, Widowhood, and Virginity

Discussions of chastity went to the core of discourses about sex and marriage in the Middle Ages, in particular as all three topics related to women. The connections begin with St. Paul, who stated that while marital sex was the only kind of sex allowed, chastity was the preferable state. According to medieval thinking, sexuality itself was uncorrupted and directed towards procreation before the Fall, … Read the rest

English Literature

The Far East

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The Far East

Accounts of the Far East appealed to medieval people’s pleasure in wonder and their desire for political, moral, historical, and geographical intelligence. According to medieval Christian geography, the Orient is the top of the mappa mundi. It is the East, farther away but also the natural extension of a spiritual line from Europe at the bottom of the map, up by way of Rome and through Jerusalem, … Read the rest

English Literature

Gender, Sexuality, and Difference Amazons

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Gender, Sexuality, and Difference Amazons

Christine de Pisan, Boccaccio, and many medieval Troy stories told and retold the ancient tales about Amazons. In them the land of “Femynye” is said to be located (to the modern mind in typically inconsistent fashion) beyond China and near the Caspian Sea. Though similar to many other marvels in romances and travel narratives (see “The Far East,” p. 99), Amazons are distinguished in some … Read the rest

English Literature

Usurpation

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Usurpation

For a year, beginning in November 1386, twelve lords of a “great and continual council” ruled England instead of King Richard II. Appointed by parliament and replacing the ineffectual chancellor Michael de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, the council’s principal task was to reform the expenses and revenues of the king’s household. The king attempted a recovery of his power in August 1387, which culminated in a ruling by … Read the rest