The Voice of the Hammer: The Meaning of Work in Middle English Literature
- Author / Editor
- Masciandaro, Nicola.
The Voice of the Hammer: The Meaning of Work in Middle English Literature
- Published
- Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007.
- Physical Description
- xii, 209 pp.
- Description
- Masciandaro investigates the vocabulary of work (travail, labour, swink, werk, craft) and its cultural significance in late medieval England, exploring depictions of the history of work in Middle English literature (including Gower, a treatise on masonry in the Cooke MS, and Chaucer's Form Age, a "critique of contemporary primitivism"). Also compares depictions of work as a "subjective necessity" in Langland and Chaucer (particularly in part 8 of CT). In SNT and CYT, Chaucer presents work as "an intrinsic requirement of the human person."
- Chaucer Subjects
- Former Age.
- Second Nun and Her Tale.
- Canon's Yeoman and His Tale.
- Language and Word Studies.