Revelation and the Apocalypse in Late Medieval Literature: The Writings of Julian of Norwich and William Langland by Justin M. Byron-Davies

The concept of regionalism reemerged in literary studies discussions a few years ago. The following essay discusses this concept in the context of late medieval literature. In the essay the author is applying three new approaches to the notion of regionalism, which are based on the studies of both language and literature. On the basis of the discussed results, the dychotomy of two structures is introduced: ‚Abgeschlossenheit‘ of a region and its ‚Durchlässigkeit‘.

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Authorial Work

Middle English ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199287666.013.0027 ◽

2007 ◽

Author(s):

Kellie Robertson

Keyword(s):

Social Norms ◽

Fourteenth Century ◽

Medieval Literature ◽

Canterbury Tales ◽

Literary Work ◽

Labor Laws ◽

Late Medieval ◽

Daily Work ◽

The Social ◽

Late Medieval Literature

Michel Foucault declared that authors became subject to punishment and discourse became transgressive. In the late fourteenth century, both “discourse” and the very act of writing itself were perceived as transgressive, a notion that resulted in a new kind of authorial self-representation in England. By the late fourteenth century, writing had assumed an ambiguous role: while it was the means by which social norms regarding labor were communicated and enforced, it could also be the object of such enforcement. This article explores how late medieval literature came to have authors by looking at literary production in the context of contemporary discourses about daily work. It considers how post-plague labor laws forced authors to situate their work not just between the venerable poles of imitatio and inventio but also between the social polarities of idleness and industry, and how post-plague writers meditated on the value of literary work in the marketplace of work more generally. Using Geoffrey Chaucer’s Prologue to the Canterbury Tales as a lens, it discusses the strategies employed by late medieval writers in positioning their work in a literary landscape characterized by explicit understandings of the material value of labor.

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The Romance of the Rose

The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199582655.013.13 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 251-269

Author(s):

David F. Hult

Keyword(s):

Sixteenth Century ◽

Medieval Literature ◽

Jean De Meun ◽

Guillaume De Lorris ◽

Late Medieval ◽

Profound Impact ◽

Romance Of The Rose ◽

Late Medieval Literature ◽

Narrative Poem ◽

The Rose

The Romance of the Rose occupies a unique position in the medieval French literary tradition, widely recognized as the most circulated and well-known French narrative poem across Europe, from the late thirteenth to the early sixteenth century. This chapter attempts to situate the two parts of the romance, attributed to two authors, within the production of verse narrative in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. By evoking the transition from orally-produced epic poetry to learned adaptations of Latin and Celtic narratives in the French vernacular, it attempts to articulate the profound impact of the Rose upon the establishment of the figure widely known as the clerkly narrator. The first author, Guillaume de Lorris, definitively developed the figure of the first-person narrator/lover figure, while the second, Jean de Meun, used the fictional ambiguity of dual authorship to create a paradigm of the deceptive narrator that will have a rich afterlife in late medieval literature.

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