Socioliterary Practice in Late Medieval England

This book should be of interest both to theorists hoping to combine materialist and linguistic approaches, and to scholars seeking insights into such varied texts as Pearl, Wynnere and Wastoure, Geoffrey Chaucer's Manciple's Tale, Nun's Priest's Tale, and Legend of Good Women, John Gower's Chronica Tripertita, Richard the Redeless, the literature of Wycliffism, Mum and the Sothsegger, or The Boke of Cupide.

• Abbreviations ; Introduction: Socioliterary practice ; 1. Constructing social realities: Wynnere and Wastoure, Hoccleve and Chaucer ; 2. Pearl - or the jeweller's tale ; 3. Unfixing the signs of kingship: Gower's Cronica Tripertita and Richard the Redeless ; 4. The regal image of Richard II and the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women ; 5. 'From pig to man and man to pig': the 1381 uprisings in Chaucer's The Nun's Priest's Tale ; 6. 'Blessed are the horny hands of toil': Wycliffite representations of the third estate ; 7. Coded birds and bees: unscrambling Mum and the Sothsegger and The Boke of Cupide ; Afterword: 'Adieu Sir Churl: Lydgate's The Churl and the Bird ; Works Cited ; Index