Is the Audience Dead Too? Textually Constructed Audiences and Differentiated Learning in Medieval England.
- Author/Editor
- Murchison, Krista A.
- Title
- Is the Audience Dead Too? Textually Constructed Audiences and Differentiated Learning in Medieval England.
- Published
- Murchison, Krista A. "Is the Audience Dead Too? Textually Constructed Audiences and Differentiated Learning in Medieval England." Modern Language Review 115, no. 3 (2020), pp. 497-517.
- Review
- Murchison asks "it is worth considering whether textually constructed audiences were simply approached with more flexibility in medieval literary contexts" (499). She suggests this issue would have mattered more for didactic texts and entertainment texts, which then frames how she will divide the remainder of her essay. Murchison first examines the "ars predicandi" beginning with Gregory the Great's "Pastoral Care." She later notes Alan de Lille's assertion that "both approach and subject matter should match the needs of one's actual audience" (502). She goes on to examine other examples in this genre before then moving into didactic works with narrower audiences. Speaking to religious guides, Murchison observes stark specificity in guides intended for one audience as opposed to another, but then she adds that "we cannot conclude from these examples alone that medieval writers and audiences were comfortable with such diversity" (505). She then examines the "Ancrene Wisse" and its constructed audience as well as the opportunities some texts would take to add constructed audiences. Shifting her attention to the "ars poetica," Murchison describes a similar expected diversity of audiences for poetic texts. In particular, she looks at Gower's textually constructed audience in the "Confessio Amantis." Murchison details the history of the poem with its initial constructed audience being Richard II then changing to Henry IV, concluding, "A deliberate act of adaptation such as this one suggests that writers of more secular texts, much like the writers of sermons, were attuned to the importance of audiences" (512). This change, however, does not lead Gower to change his other implied audiences, which, Murchison suggests, reflects his understanding of the diversity of audiences. [JGS. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.1]
- Date
- 2020
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis
Manuscripts and Textual Studies
Style, Rhetoric, and Versification