Class.

Author / Editor
Davis, Isobel.

Title
Class.

Published
Marion Turner, ed. A Handbook of Middle English Studies (Chichester: Wiley, 2013), pp. 285-98.

Description
Explores Middle English nuances of a set of related concepts: class, estate, identity, calling, and "clayme," investigating them in light of Pauline distinctions between use and possession and between old and new, discussed by Giorgio Agamben. Focuses on "how far social conditions are fixed or provisional" in WBPT, and comments on parallel concerns in "Piers Plowman" and John Gower's "Vox Clamantis."

Alternative Title
A Handbook of Middle English Studies

Chaucer Subjects
Wife of Bath and Her Tale
Language and Word Studies