This collection responds to the critical legacy of Penn R. Szittya. Its contributors investigate how medieval poetic language uniquely reflects and also shapes social, political, and religious worlds. At a moment in contemporary culture when poetry finds its value increasingly challenged, Medieval Poetics and Social Practice looks to the late Middle Ages to assert the indispensability of poetry and poetics in the formation of social structures, actions, and utterances. The volume offers new readings of canonical late-medieval English poetic texts, such as Langland's Piers Plowman and Chaucer's ... More

This collection responds to the critical legacy of Penn R. Szittya. Its contributors investigate how medieval poetic language uniquely reflects and also shapes social, political, and religious worlds. At a moment in contemporary culture when poetry finds its value increasingly challenged, Medieval Poetics and Social Practice looks to the late Middle Ages to assert the indispensability of poetry and poetics in the formation of social structures, actions, and utterances. The volume offers new readings of canonical late-medieval English poetic texts, such as Langland's Piers Plowman and Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls. In addition, it explores texts that have hitherto not held a central place in critical attention but that make important contributions to the literary culture of the period. These include The Prick of Conscience (1340–50), John Metham's Amoryus and Cleopes (1449), and the carols of James Ryman (1492). Examining the relationship between medieval poetics and social practice, the essays show how form and figure might define the structure of a power dynamic, elucidate didactic practices, and enable readers to think through the ethics of pedagogy. In this volume, considering poetics also means considering practices of teaching, learning, and social negotiation.