The reappearance of alliterative verse in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries remains one of the most puzzling issues in the literary history of medieval England. In From Lawmen to Plowmen, Stephen M. Yeager offers a fresh, insightful explanation for the alliterative structure of William Langland’s Piers Plowman and the flourishing of alliterative verse satires in late medieval England by observing the similarities between these satires and the legal-homiletical literature of the Anglo-Saxon era.Unlike Old English alliterative poetry, Anglo-Saxon legal texts and documents continued to be studied long after the Norman Conquest. By comparing Anglo-Saxon charters, sermons, and law codes with Langland’s Piers Plowman and similar poems, Yeager demonstrates that this legal and homiletical literature had an influential afterlife in the fourteenth-century poetry of William Langland and his imitators. His conclusions establish a new genealogy for medieval England’s vernacular literary tradition and offer a new way of approaching one of Middle English’s literary classics.

The reappearance of alliterative verse in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries remains one of the most puzzling issues in the literary history of medieval England. In From Lawmen to Plowmen, Stephen M. Yeager offers a fresh, insightful explanation for the alliterative structure of William Langland’s Piers Plowman and the flourishing of alliterative verse satires in late medieval England by observing the similarities between these satires and the legal-homiletical literature of the Anglo-Saxon era.Unlike Old English alliterative poetry, Anglo-Saxon legal texts and documents continued to be studied long after the Norman Conquest. By comparing Anglo-Saxon charters, sermons, and law codes with Langland’s Piers Plowman and similar poems, Yeager demonstrates that this legal and homiletical literature had an influential afterlife in the fourteenth-century poetry of William Langland and his imitators. His conclusions establish a new genealogy for medieval England’s vernacular literary tradition and offer a new way of approaching one of Middle English’s literary classics.

The reappearance of alliterative verse in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries remains one of the most puzzling issues in the literary history of medieval England. In From Lawmen to Plowmen, Stephen M. Yeager offers a fresh, insightful explanation for the alliterative structure of William Langland’s Piers Plowman and the flourishing of alliterative verse satires in late medieval England by observing the similarities between these satires and the legal-homiletical literature of the Anglo-Saxon era.Unlike Old English alliterative poetry, Anglo-Saxon legal texts and documents continued to be studied long after the Norman Conquest. By comparing Anglo-Saxon charters, sermons, and law codes with Langland’s Piers Plowman and similar poems, Yeager demonstrates that this legal and homiletical literature had an influential afterlife in the fourteenth-century poetry of William Langland and his imitators. His conclusions establish a new genealogy for medieval England’s vernacular literary tradition and offer a new way of approaching one of Middle English’s literary classics.

In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, key structural moments arise when a speaker shifts from rhyming heroic couplets to address the reader in prose, as well as in instances where prose is mentioned but not employed. These interruptions may seem like glosses explaining Chaucer’s intentions, yet they occur during the most contradictory moments of the frame narrative, making his aims particularly elusive. In Chaucer’s Problem of Prose, Stephen M. Yeager argues that the presence of prose in The Canterbury Tales exposes the complexities of poetic form, manuscript technology, and the media ecology of medieval clerical culture. The book asserts that Chaucer’s work is informed by his awareness of the significant role that Old English plays in early English monastic chronicles and cartularies, representing some of the earliest recorded uses of his chosen literary language. The book explores the surprising connections between the most striking depictions of racial otherness in The Canterbury Tales, the sections that engage with English monastic historiography, and the moments where Chaucer disrupts the narrative convention that dictates everyone in fourteenth-century England speaks in rhyming iambic pentameter couplets – either by writing in prose or discussing prose itself. Ultimately, Chaucer’s Problem of Prose examines how these moments reveal Chaucer’s anxieties about historical media and the central role of monastic historiography in documenting early English history.

In Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, key structural moments arise when a speaker shifts from rhyming heroic couplets to address the reader in prose, as well as in instances where prose is mentioned but not employed. These interruptions may seem like glosses explaining Chaucer's intentions, yet they occur during the most contradictory moments of the frame narrative, making his aims particularly elusive. In Chaucer's Problem of Prose, Stephen M. Yeager argues that the presence of prose in The Canterbury Tales exposes the complexities of poetic form, manuscript technology, and the media ecology of medieval clerical culture. The book asserts that Chaucer's work is informed by his awareness of the significant role that Old English plays in early English monastic chronicles and cartularies, representing some of the earliest recorded uses of his chosen literary language. The book explores the surprising connections between the most striking depictions of racial otherness in The Canterbury Tales, the sections that engage with English monastic historiography, and the moments where Chaucer disrupts the narrative convention that dictates everyone in fourteenth-century England speaks in rhyming iambic pentameter couplets - either by writing in prose or discussing prose itself. Ultimately, Chaucer's Problem of Prose examines how these moments reveal Chaucer's anxieties about historical media and the central role of monastic historiography in documenting early English history.

The reappearance of alliterative verse in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries remains one of the most puzzling issues in the literary history of medieval England. In From Lawmen to Plowmen, Stephen M. Yeager offers a fresh, insightful explanation for the alliterative structure of William Langland’s Piers Plowman and the flourishing of alliterative verse satires in late medieval England by observing the similarities between these satires and the legal-homiletical literature of the Anglo-Saxon era.Unlike Old English alliterative poetry, Anglo-Saxon legal texts and documents continued to be studied long after the Norman Conquest. By comparing Anglo-Saxon charters, sermons, and law codes with Langland’s Piers Plowman and similar poems, Yeager demonstrates that this legal and homiletical literature had an influential afterlife in the fourteenth-century poetry of William Langland and his imitators. His conclusions establish a new genealogy for medieval England’s vernacular literary tradition and offer a new way of approaching one of Middle English’s literary classics.

The reappearance of alliterative verse in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries remains one of the most puzzling issues in the literary history of medieval England. In From Lawmen to Plowmen, Stephen M. Yeager offers a fresh, insightful explanation for the alliterative structure of William Langland’s Piers Plowman and the flourishing of alliterative verse satires in late medieval England by observing the similarities between these satires and the legal-homiletical literature of the Anglo-Saxon era.Unlike Old English alliterative poetry, Anglo-Saxon legal texts and documents continued to be studied long after the Norman Conquest. By comparing Anglo-Saxon charters, sermons, and law codes with Langland’s Piers Plowman and similar poems, Yeager demonstrates that this legal and homiletical literature had an influential afterlife in the fourteenth-century poetry of William Langland and his imitators. His conclusions establish a new genealogy for medieval England’s vernacular literary tradition and offer a new way of approaching one of Middle English’s literary classics.

The reappearance of alliterative verse in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries remains one of the most puzzling issues in the literary history of medieval England. In From Lawmen to Plowmen, Stephen M. Yeager offers a fresh, insightful explanation for the alliterative structure of William Langland’s Piers Plowman and the flourishing of alliterative verse satires in late medieval England by observing the similarities between these satires and the legal-homiletical literature of the Anglo-Saxon era.Unlike Old English alliterative poetry, Anglo-Saxon legal texts and documents continued to be studied long after the Norman Conquest. By comparing Anglo-Saxon charters, sermons, and law codes with Langland’s Piers Plowman and similar poems, Yeager demonstrates that this legal and homiletical literature had an influential afterlife in the fourteenth-century poetry of William Langland and his imitators. His conclusions establish a new genealogy for medieval England’s vernacular literary tradition and offer a new way of approaching one of Middle English’s literary classics.

In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, key structural moments arise when a speaker shifts from rhyming heroic couplets to address the reader in prose, as well as in instances where prose is mentioned but not employed. These interruptions may seem like glosses explaining Chaucer’s intentions, yet they occur during the most contradictory moments of the frame narrative, making his aims particularly elusive. In Chaucer’s Problem of Prose, Stephen M. Yeager argues that the presence of prose in The Canterbury Tales exposes the complexities of poetic form, manuscript technology, and the media ecology of medieval clerical culture. The book asserts that Chaucer’s work is informed by his awareness of the significant role that Old English plays in early English monastic chronicles and cartularies, representing some of the earliest recorded uses of his chosen literary language. The book explores the surprising connections between the most striking depictions of racial otherness in The Canterbury Tales, the sections that engage with English monastic historiography, and the moments where Chaucer disrupts the narrative convention that dictates everyone in fourteenth-century England speaks in rhyming iambic pentameter couplets – either by writing in prose or discussing prose itself. Ultimately, Chaucer’s Problem of Prose examines how these moments reveal Chaucer’s anxieties about historical media and the central role of monastic historiography in documenting early English history.

In Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, key structural moments arise when a speaker shifts from rhyming heroic couplets to address the reader in prose, as well as in instances where prose is mentioned but not employed. These interruptions may seem like glosses explaining Chaucer's intentions, yet they occur during the most contradictory moments of the frame narrative, making his aims particularly elusive. In Chaucer's Problem of Prose, Stephen M. Yeager argues that the presence of prose in The Canterbury Tales exposes the complexities of poetic form, manuscript technology, and the media ecology of medieval clerical culture. The book asserts that Chaucer's work is informed by his awareness of the significant role that Old English plays in early English monastic chronicles and cartularies, representing some of the earliest recorded uses of his chosen literary language. The book explores the surprising connections between the most striking depictions of racial otherness in The Canterbury Tales, the sections that engage with English monastic historiography, and the moments where Chaucer disrupts the narrative convention that dictates everyone in fourteenth-century England speaks in rhyming iambic pentameter couplets - either by writing in prose or discussing prose itself. Ultimately, Chaucer's Problem of Prose examines how these moments reveal Chaucer's anxieties about historical media and the central role of monastic historiography in documenting early English history.