OXFORD TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY APPROACHES TO LITERATURE This page intentionally left blank OXFORD TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY APPROACHES TO LITERATURE Middle English Edited by PAUL STROHM 1 1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York Oxford University Press 2007 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by Laserwords Private Limited, Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper byPrinted in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 978–0–19–928766–6 13579108642 CONTENTS List of Illustrations vii Notes on Contributors ix 1 PAUL STROHM Introduction 1 Part I CONDITIONS AND CONTEXTS 2 CAROL SYMES Manuscript Matrix, Modern Canon 7 3 ROBERT M. STEIN Multilingualism 23 4 CHRISTOPHER BASWELL Multilingualism on the Page 38 5 MICHELLE R. WARREN Translation 51 6 JOYCE COLEMAN Aurality 68 7 ALEXANDRA GILLESPIE Books 86 Part II VANTAGE POINTS 8 CAROLYN DINSHAW Temporalities 107 9 DIANE CADY Symbolic Economies 124 10 EMILY STEINER Authority 142 11 D. VANCE SMITH Institutions 160 12 CHRISTOPHER CANNON Form 177 13 ELIZABETH ALLEN Episodes 191 14 MAURA NOLAN Beauty 207 15 NICOLETTE ZEEMAN Imaginative Theory 222 vi CONTENTS 16 SARAH MCNAMER Feeling 241 17 MARION TURNER Conflict 258 Part III TEXTUAL KINDS AND CATEGORIES 18 ALFRED HIATT Genre without System 277 19 BRUCE HOLSINGER Liturgy 295 20 JESSICA BRANTLEY Vision, Image, Text 315 21 KAREN A. WINSTEAD Saintly Exemplarity 335 22 MATTHEW GIANCARLO Speculative Genealogies 352 23 NANCY BRADLEY WARREN Incarnational (Auto)biography 369 24 SHEILA LINDENBAUM Drama as Textual Practice 386 25 VINCENT GILLESPIE Vernacular Theology 401 26 ANDREW COLE Heresy and Humanism 421 Part IV WRITING AND THE WORLD 27 KELLIE ROBERTSON Authorial Work 441 28 STEPHANIE TRIGG Learning to Live 459 29 SUSAN E. PHILLIPS Gossip and (Un)official Writing 476 30 LISA H. COOPER The Poetics of Practicality 491 Index of Medieval Authors and Titles 507 Index of Names 513 Subject Index 519 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1 Chaucer prelects from the opening W of ‘Whan that 70 aprill … ’ (London, BL Lansdowne 851, fo. 2; by permission of the British Library) Figure 2 The audience that listens together sits together. (Paris, 74 BnF fr 22545, fo. 75v; by permission of the Bibliotheque` Nationale de France) Figure 3 Chaucer’s audience clusters around him. (Cambridge, 75 Corpus Christi College 61, fo. 1v, by permission of the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge) Figure 4 Cicero lecturing at the Sorbonne. (Ghent, Univ. Bibl. 78 10, fo. 37v; by permission of the Universiteits- bibliotheek Gent) Figure 5 Wooden statue of St Bridget at Vadstena. (Hope Allen’s 119 papers, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. ENG. MISC c. 484, fo. 222.) On reverse Allen noted that the expression, ‘not quite ecstasy’, is ‘MK’s ‘‘laughing countenance’’ ’. Figure 6 Four stages of spiritual vision. (London, British Library 324 MS Yates-Thompson 11 [Additional 39843), fo. 29r;by permission of the British Library) Figure 7 Bishop William Wykeham (seated) and his circle, 428 among whom are several noted humanists. Grisaille illustration. (Oxford, New College MS 288, fol. 4r.By permission of the Master and Fellows of New College) Figure 8 Archer shooting at the world. 1408 Illustration of 449 Gower’s Vox Clamantis. (London, BL Cotton Tiberius A. iv., fo. 9v, by permission of the British Library) This page intentionally left blank NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Elizabeth Allen teaches in the English Department at the University of California, Irvine. Her book on False Fables and Exemplary Truth in Later Middle English Literature was recently published by Palgrave Macmillan. She is currently investigating narratives of sanctuary in late medieval England. [email protected] Christopher Baswell teaches medieval subjects at the University of California, Los Angeles. His interests include Arthurian literature, and is the author of Virgil in Medieval England: Figuring the Aeneid from the Twelfth Century to Chaucer. [email protected] Jessica Brantley teaches Old and Middle English literature at Yale University. Her book on Reading in the Wilderness: The Drama of Devotion in an Illustrated Carthusian Miscellany is forthcoming with University of Chicago Press. She is currently engaged in a study of the iconography of Chaucer’s ‘Complaint of Mars’. [email protected] Diane Cady teaches English at Mills College. She has published essays on gender and money and on language and disease, and is completing a monograph on gender and medieval fears and fantasies about money. [email protected] Christopher Cannon is a member of the Faculty of English in the University of Cambridge. His most recent book is The Grounds of English Literature, published by Oxford University Press, and he is currently writing a cultural history of Middle English. [email protected] Andrew Cole teaches in the Department of English at the University of Georgia. He is co-editor of the Yearbook of Langland Studies and his forthcoming book will concern England after heresy, 1382–1420. [email protected] Lisa H. Cooper is a member of the Department of English at the University of Wisconsin- Madison. She has written on the grail legend and on Caxton’s Dialogues, and is working on a book entitled Crafting Narratives: Artisans, Authors, and the Literary Artifact in Late Medieval England. [email protected] Joyce Coleman is a member of the English Department at the University of Oklahoma. Recent articles have concerned Philippa of Lancaster, the frontispiece to a French City of God, and the prologue of Wynnere and Wastoure. Her next book will focus on book iconography in manuscript illumination. [email protected] x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Carolyn Dinshaw teaches in the Departments of English and of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU. She is author of Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Post-Modern, with Duke University Press. Her current project concerns medieval and post-medieval experiences of temporality. [email protected] Matthew Giancarlo teaches in the English Department at Yale University. Recent articles have appeared in Representations and Studies in the Age of Chaucer. His book Parliament and Literature in Late Medieval England is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. [email protected] Alexandra Gillespie teaches in the English Department at the University of Toronto. Her most recent publication is Print Culture and the Medieval Author: Chaucer, Lydgate, and Their Books, 1476–1557, with Oxford University Press. She is currently co-editing a collection of essays on book production in England, 1350–1535. [email protected] Vincent Gillespie teaches English literature at the University of Oxford. A selection of his articles and papers will appear next year as Looking in Holy Books, to be published by the University of Wales Press. He is currently working on a study of fifteenth-century orthodox religious culture in England. [email protected] Alfred Hiatt teaches Old and Middle English literature at the University of Leeds. He is author of The Making of Medieval Forgeries: False Documents in Fifteenth-Century England, published by the British Library, and is currently engaged in a study of terra incognita in the medieval and early modern geographical imagination. [email protected] Bruce Holsinger teaches in the departments of English and Music at the University of Virginia. His most recent book is The Premodern Condition: Medievalism and the Making of Theory. His chapter in this volume is part of a longer-term project on liturgical culture and vernacular writing in England. [email protected] Sheila Lindenbaum is the editor of the forthcoming Westminster volume in the Records of English Drama series and the author of articles on medieval spectacle and dramatic entertainments. Formerly at Indiana University, she now lives in London, where she is completing a study of literate practice in late medieval London. [email protected] Sarah McNamer teaches in the Department of English at Georgetown University, where she specializes in medieval performance, meditative literature, and the history of devotion. She is writing a book on compassion. [email protected] Maura Nolan teaches English literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Cambridge University Press recently published her JohnLydgateandtheMakingofPublicCulture.She is currently finishing a book on Fortune as a literary idea, and plans to study the problem of the aesthetic in medieval literature. [email protected] Susan Phillips teaches medieval and early modern literature and culture at Northwestern University.