False fables and exemplary truth in later Middle English literature

Description:

"In False Fables and Exemplary Truth, Elizabeth Allen charts relationships between moral claims and audience response in the work of poets such as Chaucer, Gower, Robert Henryson, and several anonymous scribes. Far from simply commanding people to conduct themselves virtuously, many of these exemplary works call attention to the vicissitudes of authority and audience response. Studying this debate reveals a set of local literary histories, based on both canonical and non-canonical texts, that complicate received notions of the didactic Middle Ages, the sophisticated Renaissance, and the fallow fifteenth century in between. Allen addresses scholars of medieval and early modern literature, but also aims to reach other fields of literary and humanistic inquiry."--Jacket.

subjects: Conduct of life in literature,  Didactic literature, English (Middle),  English literature,  Exempla in literature,  History,  History and criticism,  Literature and society,  Didactic poetry, history and criticism,  English poetry, history and criticism, middle english, 1100-1500,  Didactic poetry, English (Middle),  Virtue in literature

Places: England

Times: Middle English, 1100-1500,  To 1500