Lies, Slander, and Obscenity in Medieval English Literature: Pastoral Rhetoric and the Deviant Speaker
- Author / Editor
- Craun, Edwin D.
Lies, Slander, and Obscenity in Medieval English Literature: Pastoral Rhetoric and the Deviant Speaker
- Published
- Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press, 1997.
- Physical Description
- xiii, 255 pp.
- Description
- Draws from thirteenth-century pastoral literature (much of it in manuscript) that treats "Sins of the Tongue" to demonstrate how a pastoral "speech code" was "woven into late medieval [literary] texts." Chapters 1 and 2 distinguish in the pastoral literature certain "rhetorical paradigms," while Chapters 3-6 identify and explore these paradigms in "Patience," "Confessio Amantis," "Piers Plowman," and CT.
- Craun concludes that in GP, ManP, and ManT the Manciple "subverts the prudential strain in pastoral discourse, just as he practices deviant speech with impunity." In ParsT, however, the Parson restores order, "responding" to the Manciple with "conventional pastoral discourse on verbal sin" and "enact[ing] what he exhorts of others."
- Chaucer Subjects
- Background and General Criticism.
- Manciple and His Tale.
- Parson and His Tale.