Books Under Suspicion: Censorship and Tolerance of Revelatory Writing in Late Medieval England
- Author / Editor
- Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn.
Books Under Suspicion: Censorship and Tolerance of Revelatory Writing in Late Medieval England
- Published
- Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006.
- Physical Description
- lii, 562 pp.; 21 b&w illus.; 1 color illus.
- Description
- Studies the cultural, literary, and codicological contexts for English late medieval works of revealed writing - apocalyptic, visionary, mystical, prophetic, etc. - considering the reception of Continental works in England and works composed in English. Clarifies how works by Joachim of Fiore, William de St. Amour, Peter Olivi, William of Ockham, the "Opus arduum," and others are related to and separate from Wyclifitte writings, concentrating on their status as heretical texts and their influences on Middle English literature: Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich, "Piers Plowman," and several of Chaucer's works. Reads Rom (part C) in light of orthodoxy and the Roman de la Rose; HF as a "teasing satire of the revelatory" (especially Langland's Piers); ClT and NPT on free will and God's power; and Ret as a conservative withdrawal of humanist fiction. Contains a useful "Chronology" of non-Wycliffite cases of heresy and related events (xix-lii), plus three related appendices.
- Chaucer Subjects
- House of Fame
- Romaunt of the Rose
- Clerk and His Tale.
- Nun's Priest and His Tale.
- Chaucer's Retraction.