Confession and Resistance: Defining the Self in Late Medieval England
- Author / Editor
- Little, Katherine C.
Confession and Resistance: Defining the Self in Late Medieval England
- Published
- Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006.
- Physical Description
- vii, 196 pp.
- Description
- Centers on medieval self-definition rather than subjectivity and studies examples of Wycliffite lay instruction. The Lollards rejected auricular confession and emphasized personal contrition for sin. Lollard pastoral texts disrupted traditional discourses of self-definition by distinguishing discursive strands - narrative vs. pastoral language - that had been linked in earlier texts. The relationship between confession and creation of the medieval self is more complicated than is generally recognized (in the tradition of Foucault), and readers should resist prioritizing the confessing self, which causes "the perpetuation of . . . the 'antimonies' between self and other and individual and society." Chapter 3 discusses the Parson of GP and ParsT.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Parson and His Tale.