Maintenance, Meed, and Marriage in Middle English Literature
- Author / Editor
- Kennedy, Kathleen E.
Maintenance, Meed, and Marriage in Middle English Literature
- Published
- New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
- Physical Description
- 185 pp.
- Series
- The New Middle Ages.
- Description
- Examines a variety of medieval social relations as forms of "maintenance," i.e., "being provided or providing the wherewithal to live." Lord-retainer, master-servant, and husband-wife relations are analogous forms of maintenance that inform one another as depicted in late medieval English literature, including letters and historical records. Kennedy's literary topics focus on works by Chaucer, Gower, Langland, Lydgate, and Hoccleve. She discusses concerns with coverture and rape in FranT and in WBT and its analogue, "The Weddynge of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell."
- Chaucer Subjects
- Wife of Bath and Her Tale
- Franklin and His Tale
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations