Manuals for Penitents in Medieval English: From “Ancrene Wisse” to the “Parson’s Tale.”

Author / Editor
Murchison, Krista A.

Title
Manuals for Penitents in Medieval English: From “Ancrene Wisse” to the “Parson’s Tale.”

Published
Cambridge: Brewer, 2021.

Physical Description
xiv, 175 pp.

Description
Describes and assesses the wide array of guides to penitential self-examination in late medieval Latin, Anglo-Norman, and Middle English, viewing them in the contexts of the 1215 Lateran Council, the rise in popular religion, and developing notions of subjectivity and identity. Includes a chapter on ParsT, “‘To enden in som vertuous sentence': Concluding with Chaucer’s Parson," which clarifies the orthodoxy of its general form and content, despite its lack of discussion of the Ten Commandments and the "Pater noster."

Alternative Title
“To enden in som vertuous sentence": Concluding with Chaucer's Parson.

Chaucer Subjects
Parson and His Tale
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations