Engaging Words : The Culture of Reading in the Later Middle Ages
- Author / Editor
- Amtower, Laurel.
Engaging Words : The Culture of Reading in the Later Middle Ages
- Published
- New York and Houndsmill, Basingstoke : Palgrave, 2000.
- Physical Description
- xii, 243 pp. : 10 b&w figs.
- Series
- The New Middle Ages.
- Description
- Analyzes depictions of reading in books of hours and assesses the theme of reading in Dante, Petrarch, Chaucer, and Christine de Pizan, examining a new "reflexive relationship" between "reading habits and the shaping of identity" in the late Middle Ages. Challenging the notion of a static authoritative text, Chaucer encouraged his audience to recognize that selves are "textually constructed" and that reading is fundmentally ethical.
- HFdefines Chaucer's assumptions about reading, and TC portrays reading as a "private act with social ramifications." In CT, the Wife of Bath's attitudes toward texts contrasts with the "unreflective attitudes" of the Prioress. The Clerk exemplifies self-conscious uses of texts, and Chaucer promotes awareness of the roles of texts in creating subjectivity.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Troilus and Criseyde.
- House of Fame.
- Prioress and Her Tale.
- Wife of Bath and Her Tale.
- Clerk and His Tale.