Challenging communion : the Eucharist and Middle English literature /
Jennifer Garrison.
- Columbus : The Ohio State University Press, [2017]
- 1 electronic resource (x, 207 pages).
- Interventions: new studies in medieval culture .
- Interventions: new studies in medieval culture. .
Includes bibliographical references (pages 187-201) and index.
Resisting the fantasy of identification in Robert Mannyng's Handlyng Synne -- Devotional submission and the Pearl-poet -- Christ's allegorical bodies and the failure of community in Piers Plowman -- Julian of Norwich's Allegory and the mediation of salvation -- The willful surrender of eucharistic reading in Nicholas Love and Margery Kempe -- John Lydgate and the eucharistic poetic tradition: the making of community -- Conclusion.
In this book, Jennifer Garrison examines literary representations of the central symbol of later medieval religious culture: the Eucharist. In contrast to scholarship that depicts mainstream believers as enthusiastically and simplistically embracing the Eucharist, Challenging Communion: The Eucharist and Middle English Literature identifies a pervasive Middle English literary tradition that rejects simplistic notions of eucharistic promise. Through new readings of texts such as Piers Plowman, A Revelation of Love, The Book of Margery Kempe, and John Lydgate's religious poetry, Garrison shows how writers of Middle English often take advantage of the ways in which eucharistic theology itself contests the boundaries between the material and the spiritual, and how these writers challenge the eucharistic idea of union between Christ and the community of believers.
In English.
9780814274620 0814274625 9780814274637 0814274633
Lord's Supper in literature. English literature--History and criticism.--Middle English, 1100-1500 Eucharistie dans la littérature. Littérature anglaise--Histoire et critique.--1100-1500 (Moyen anglais) LITERARY CRITICISM--European--English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh. English literature--Middle English. Lord's Supper in literature.
Electronic books. Electronic books. Criticism, interpretation, etc. Electronic books.