... than of preeminent status gained as a reward for past literary work. Further, the poem's version of literary and artistic tradition requires that poetry must take its place alongside other forms of artistic representation to form a full and complex account of history. Skelton here reconceptualizes...

...Eleanor Johnson This essay argues that Chaucer’s much- unloved “Monk’s Tale,” rather than being a failure or misfire on Chaucer’s part, actually constitutes a high- water mark of the bold and experimental literary theory that characterizes much of Chaucer’s later career. In this case, the Monk...

... authoritative text par excellence ) should be implemented. There are striking parallels and intersections between scholastic literary theory and the “originalist” theory of constitutional interpretation; they share a common language of intentionalism, along with difficulties of interpretation...

... sufficiency and to echoing Aristotle on magnanimity. Milton’s thinking on the virtues and their acquisition is eclectic. This essay traces the effect on Milton’s thinking of the gravitational pull of the literary in two senses: Milton’s conception of himself as inspired author and his attraction...

...David Schalkwyk Posing the unusual question of what Shakespeare's speech might be in relation to the texts that go under the name “William Shakespeare,” this essay puts to the question a number of assumptions in literary theory about character, subjectivity, genre, the place of the author...

...Jean Balsamo The editorial process of a book's production—far from a minor material detail in its formation or an anecdotal event of publishing history—constitutes a meaningful aspect of its elaboration as a literary work, as significant as the author's biography. Indeed, book history...

... ancient epic. A decade later, however, Vegio was alluding to Virgil’s poetry irreverently in distichs and epigrams, regarding Virgil’s example as justification for poetic frivolity. The vogue for such poetic trifles sparked controversy between Vegio and his literary associates over poetic decorum...

... during the period, a material history of reading intersects with a less material history of interpretation. Evidence from early bibles and their users of all sorts—known biblical scholars, literary figures, or anonymous readers—sheds light on how readers confronted the changing problems of interpretation...

...James Simpson Almost every interpretative university discipline in or adjacent to the Humanities makes routine, unproblematic appeal to intention as an interpretative move. By proscribing intentionalism as an instrument of interpretation, Literary Criticism is the outlier among adjacent and not so...

...Shannon Gayk; Evelyn Reynolds This special issue considers how depictions of premodern catastrophe—environmental, social, political—shape and are shaped by literary form. The issue's introduction explores what form has to do with catastrophe and offers a case study of how form moves in a Middle...

... exegetics remains (as Lee Patterson said) the “great unfinished business” of medieval literary studies. This essay argues for the rejection of Robertsonianism as an inadequately historicist approach to the medieval Bible, and, by focusing on formal details of the biblical manuscripts evoked in Geoffrey...

... of intrigue against the English polity. Pleasant notes itself was a defense of pre–Civil War literary values (where Ben Jonson is regarded as the English Cervantes) and of pre–Civil War and Civil War Oxford (during which time the university was the royalist headquarters), which is presented as a picaresque...

...Caitlin Mahaffy This article investigates two literary works from the premodern era: Mandeville's Travels (composed between 1357 and 1371) and Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World (1666) , both of which depict hybrid creatures as natural rather than monstrously unnatural. These two texts...

..., this article shows how popular literature of the profane, in denouncing excessive pride in apparel, had a profound and lasting influence on homiletic discourse. Sermons are hybrid texts that incorporate both the themes and literary flourish of texts written by secular, polemical authors, such as Philip Stubbes...

...Sarah Beckwith; James Simpson The deepest periodic division in English literary history is between the “medieval” and the “early modern,” not least because the cultural investments in maintaining that division are exceptionally powerful. Narratives of national and religious identity and freedom...

...-appreciated factor in the history of medieval diplomatic encounters. Examining chronicle sources and later literary renditions of the incident, retold from both French and an Anglo-Norman perspectives, the article reveals how medieval commentators made use of a rich emotional vocabulary in order either...

... concretely a number of pervasive social and cultural anxieties about masculine self-presentation in Bruno's time. This essay brings together literary and cultural history within the broader context of gender and body studies of Renaissance Italy, in particular, and, more generally, of the European...