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Examines the impact of the Hundred Years' War on French and English literature of the period, revealing the ways in which history influences literature and literature intervenes in history.
This book explores the intersection of the Hundred Years' War and the production of vernacular literature in France and England. Reviewing a range of prominent works that address the war, including those by Deschamps, Christine de Pizan, Gower, Langland, and Chaucer, as well as anonymous texts and the records of Joan of Arc's trial, Inscribing the Hundred Years' War In French and English Cultures demonstrates the ways in which late-medieval authors responded to the immediate sociopolitical pressures and participated in the debates about the war. The book also investigates the work literary texts performed in their cultural economy by showing how they influenced the development of French and English national identities.
Contributors include John M. Bowers; Ellen C. Caldwell; Susan Crane; Patricia DeMarco; Judith Ferster; Norris Lacy; Anne Lutkus; Earl Jeffrey Richards; Michele Szkilnik; Julia M. Walker; and Robert Yeager.
"An excellent example of New Historicism or 'critical historicism.' Many of the essays speak to one another and pick up issues only touched upon in earlier essays, or provide a complementary reading of the same works or an author's corpus. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the entire collection." — Deborah McGrady, Tulane University
"This book deals with important texts and issues that will engage a variety of scholars and fill in the particulars of a confusing period of English and French history." — Lynn Staley, Colgate University
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Denise N. Baker
1. Warmongering in Verse: Les Voeux du Heron
Norris J. Lacy
2. Inscribing the Body with Meaning: Chivalric Culture and the Norms of Violence in The Vows of the Heron
Patricia DeMarco
3. Meed and the Economics of Chivalry in Piers Plowman
Denise N. Baker
4. Chaucer's Tale of Melibee: Contradictions and Context
Judith Ferster
5. Chaucer after Retters: The Wartime Origins of English Literature
John M. Bowers
6. Politics and the French Language in England during the Hundred Years' War: The Case of John Gower
R. F. Yeager
7. The Uncertainty in Defining France as a Nation in the Works of Eustache Deschamps
Earl Jeffrey Richards
8. The Political Poetics of the Ditie de Jehanne d'Arc
Anne D. Lutkus and Julia M. Walker
9. Clothing and Gender Definition: Joan of Arc
Susan Crane
10. A Pacifist Utopia: Cleriadus et Meliadice
Michelle Szkilnik
11. The Hundred Years' War and National Identity
Ellen C. Caldwell
List of Contributors
Index