Review
"...Craun's analysis provides a model of how reinscribing the literary within its appropriate traditions, engaging the rhetorical backgrounds that fourteenth-century poets would have expected their readers to share, helps to bring poetry to life." Kathryn L. Lynch, Speculum--A Journal of Medieval Studies
Book Description
Drawing on manuscript sources, this book examines how the medieval clergy developed the authority and persuasive force to attempt to govern the day-to-day speech of Western Christians. It explores, for the first time, how Chaucer, Langland, Gower and the "Patience" poet presented and judged these attempts to label some political, social and private speech as deviant and destructive--as lying, slander, blasphemy and other Sins of the Tongue.
Lies, Slander and Obscenity in Medieval English Narrative: Pastoral Rhetoric and the Deviant Speaker FROM THE PUBLISHER
Drawing on manuscript sources, Pastoral Rhetoric and the Deviant Speaker examines how the medieval clergy developed the authority and persuasive force to attempt to govern the day-to-day speech of Western Christians. It explores, for the first time, how Chaucer, Langland, Gower and the 'Patience' poet presented and judged these attempts to label some political, social and private speech as deviant and destructive - as lying, slander, blasphemy and other Sins of the Tongue.
Art & Photography
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