1st Edition

Law and Religion in Chaucer's England

By Henry Ansgar Kelly Copyright 2010
416 Pages
by Routledge

416 Pages
by Routledge

416 Pages
by Routledge

These essays, in a second collection by Professor Kelly, investigate legal and religious subjects touching on the age and places in which Geoffrey Chaucer lived and wrote, especially as reflected in the more contemporary sections of the Canterbury Tales. Topics include the canon law of incest (consanguinity, affinity, spiritual kinship), the prosecution of sexual offences and regulation of... Read more
Contents: Introduction; Part A Sex/Gender: Shades of incest and cuckoldry: Pandarus and John of Gaunt; Bishop, prioress, and bawd in the stews of Southwark; Medieval laws and views on wife beating; The Pardoner's voice, disjunctive narrative, and modes of effemination. Part B The Sacraments: Sacraments, sacramentals, and lay piety in Chaucer's England; Penitential theology and law at the turn of the 15th century. Part C Non-Christians and England: Jews ands Saracens in Chaucer's England: a review of the evidence; 'The Prioress's Tale' in context: good and bad reports of non-Christians in 14th-century England; Chaucer's Knight and the northern 'crusades': the example of Henry Bolingbroke. Part D Case Studies: A neo-revisionist look at Chaucer's nuns; How Cecelia came to be a saint and patron (matron?) of music; Canon law and Chaucer on licit and illicit magic; Addenda and corrigenda; Index.

Biography

Henry Ansgar Kelly is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of English, University of California - Los Angeles, USA

'A valuable collection of eleven influential and deeply learned essays published since 1991 by one of the most distinguished scholars of medieval English literature and culture.' Medium Aevum '... throughout the volume Kelly engages imaginatively, energetically, and rigorously with a variety of questions. For the work presented here, and for his broader contributions to scholarship on the English Middle Ages, we will remain in his debt.' Journal of Anglican and Episcopal History