Penitentials to Poetry: The Literary Critique of Avarice in Fourteenth-Century England.
- Author/Editor
- Ward, Jessica D.
- Title
- Penitentials to Poetry: The Literary Critique of Avarice in Fourteenth-Century England.
- Published
- Ward, Jessica D. "Penitentials to Poetry: The Literary Critique of Avarice in Fourteenth-Century England." Ph.D. Dissertation. The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2019. 218 pp. DAI A81.01 (2019). Full text accessible at http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/Ward_uncg_0154D_12677.pdf (unrestricted); accessed February 22, 2022.
- Review
- From Ward's abstract: "My dissertation elucidates how . . .William Langland [in 'Piers Plowman'], John Gower [in 'Confessio Amantis'], and Geoffrey Chaucer [in 'The Canterbury Tales'] . . . address the challenge posed to Christian ethics due to the proliferation of urban markets and increased personal wealth in medieval England . . . . [and] demonstrates that these vernacular authors appropriate the various genres of penitential literature, one of the most popular forms of writing in the period, to foster their readers as moral subjects . . . . [T]hese poets deploy the rhetorical techniques of a specific penitential discourse to argue that avarice--not pride--is the most pernicious vice because it diminishes communal wellbeing and harms individuals and their relations to God."
- Date
- 2019
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations