Documentary Culture and the Making of Medieval English Literature [Hardcover]

Emily Steiner describes the rich intersections between legal documents and English literature in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.Emily Steiner describes the rich intersections between legal documents and English literature in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. She argues that documentary culture (including charters, testaments, patents and seals) enabled writers to think in new ways about the conditions of textual production in late medieval England.Emily Steiner describes the rich intersections between legal documents and English literature in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. She argues that documentary culture (including charters, testaments, patents and seals) enabled writers to think in new ways about the conditions of textual production in late medieval England.Emily Steiner describes the rich intersection between legal documents and English literature in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. She argues that documentary culture (including charters, testaments, patents and seals) enabled writers to think in new ways about the conditions of textual production in late Medieval England.Part I. Documentary Poetics: 1. Bracton, Deguileville and the defense of allegory; 2. Lyric, genre, and the material text; Part II. Langland's Documents: 3. Piers Plowman and the archive of salvation; 4. Writing public: documents in the Piers Plowman tradition; Part III. Identity, Heterodoxy, Documents: 5. Lollard community and the Charters of Christ; 6. Lollard rhetoric and the written record: Margery Baxter and William Thorpe; Epilogue: 'My lordys lettyr & the seel of Cawntyrbery'. [T]his attentive and intriguing study will appeal to those interested in legal documents in relaion to medieval literature and cultures. Recommended. Choice