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Medieval Conduct Kathleen Ashley and Robert L. A. Clark, editors |
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$72.00 Cloth |
What do books on how to behave tell us about society during the Middle Ages? Rather than accepting the conventional view of conduct books as simply prescriptive, the contributors to this volume take advantage of the opportunity conduct literature offers for examining the link between prescription and historical practice. Focusing on a broad range of texts from England, France, Germany, and Italy—conduct and courtesy books, advise poems, devotional literature, trial records—the contributors to Medieval Conduct draw attention to the diverse ways in which readers of this literature could interpret such behavioral guides, appropriating them to their own ends. Medieval Conduct expands the concept of conduct to include historicized practices, and theorizes the connection between texts and their concrete social uses; what emerges is a nuanced interpretation of the role of gender and class inscribed in such texts. By bringing to light these subtleties and complexities, the authors also reveal the ways in which the assumptions of literary history have shaped our reception of such texts in the past two centuries. “Scholars of medieval literature will undoubtedly find this collection thought-provoking.” —History: Reviews of New Books “This excellent collection of essays provides a much-needed assessment of the status of conduct literature in current medieval studies.” —Arthuriana “Ashley and Clark’s collection of imaginative, engaging, and theoretically informed essays presents a new vision of conduct literature. Filled with insights.” —Speculum Contributors: Mark Addison Amos, Anna Dronzek, Roberta L. Krueger, Ruth Nissé, Ann Marie Rasmussen, Jennifer Fisk Rondeau, Claire Sponsler. Kathleen Ashley is professor of English at the University of Southern Maine. Robert Clark is associate professor of French at Kansas State University. 264 pages | 5 black-and-white photos | 5-7/8 x 9 | 2001 |
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