Form and Power in Medieval and Early Modern Literature: A Book for James Simpson

New and exciting scholarship on medieval and early modern English culture in all its diversity.

This book honours James Simpson, an enormously influential figure in English literary studies. Known for championing once-neglected writers such as Gower, Hoccleve, and Lydgate, Simpson has also pioneered the field of Trans-Reformation studies, dismantling the barrier between the medieval and early modern periods. He has written powerfully about the history of freedoms, the relationship between literary and intellectual history, and about the category of the literary itself in all its urgency.

Inspired by Simpson's interventions, the essays collected here deal with texts and topics from the eighth to the seventeenth centuries. Langland's Piers Plowman and Chaucer's Physician's Tale and Troilus and Criseyde rub shoulders with Old English riddles, Saint Erkenwald, The Digby Lyrics, Lydgate's Dietary, and Lodge's Robert the Devil. Revisionist studies of two much-debated genres - allegory and romance - join forces with chapters on neglected physical features of early books, line-fillers and catchwords, as well as studies of iconoclasm and the histories of enemy love. The volume begins with a piece by the honorand himself, on recognition in literary texts.

Author: Daniel G. Donoghue
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Published: 03/05/2024
Pages: 376
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.55lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.88d
ISBN: 9781843847113

About the Author
Ashe, Laura: - LAURA ASHE is Professor of English at the University of Oxford and Fellow and Tutor at Worcester College, Oxford.Simpson, James: - James Simpson teaches English at Harvard University. He publishes on a wide range of topics in on late medieval and early modern Western European Literature.Donoghue, Daniel G.: - DANIEL DONOGHUE is Professor of English at Harvard University. His research explores Old English, Middle English, the History of English, Medievalism and Cognitive Literary Studies.
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