Translations of Authority in Medieval English Literature: Valuing the Vernacular
Cambridge University Press, 3/19/2009
EAN 9780521515948, ISBN10: 0521515947
Hardcover, 288 pages, 23.5 x 16 x 2 cm
Language: English
In Translations of Authority in Medieval English Literature, leading critic Alastair Minnis presents the fruits of a long-term engagement with the ways in which crucial ideological issues were deployed in vernacular texts. The concept of the vernacular is seen as possessing a value far beyond the category of language - as encompassing popular beliefs and practices which could either confirm or contest those authorized by church and state institutions. Minnis addresses the crisis for vernacular translation precipitated by the Lollard heresy; the minimal engagement with Nominalism in late fourteenth-century poetry; Langland's views on indulgences; the heretical theology of Walter Brut; Margery Kempe's self-promoting biblical exegesis; and Chaucer's tales of suspicious saints and risible relics. These discussions disclose different aspects of 'vernacularity', enabling a fuller understanding of its complexity and potency.
Introduction
1. Absent glosses
the trouble with Middle English hermeneutics
2. Looking for a sign
the quest for Nominalism in Ricardian poetry
3. Piers' protean pardon
Langland on the letter and spirit of indulgences
4. Making bodies
confection and conception in Walter Brut's vernacular theology
5. Spiritualizing marriage
Margery Kempe's allegories of female authority
6. Chaucer and the relics of vernacular religion.