Overview

"It is a medieval truism that the poet meddles with words, the lawyer with the world. But are the poet's words and the lawyer's world really so far apart? To what extent does the art of making poems share in the craft of making laws, and vice versa? Framed by such questions, Piers Plowman and the Reinvention of Church Law in the Late Middle Ages examines the mutually productive interaction between literary and legal ""makyngs"" in England's great Middle English poem by William Langland. Focusing on Piers Plowman's preoccupation with wrongdoing in the B and C versions, Arvind Thomas examines the versions' representations of trials, confessions, restitutions, penalties, and pardons. Thomas explores how the ""literary"" informs and transforms the ""legal"" until they finally cannot be separated. Thomas shows how the poem's narrative voice, metaphor, syntax and style not only reflect but also act upon properties of canon law, such as penitential procedures and authoritative maxims. Langland's mobilization of juridical concepts, Thomas insists, not only engenders a poetics informed by canonist thought but also expresses an alternative vision of canon law from that proposed by medieval jurists and today's medievalists."

Full Product Details

Author:   Arvind Thomas
Publisher:   University of Toronto Press
Imprint:   University of Toronto Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.80cm , Length: 23.10cm
Weight:   0.580kg
ISBN:  

9781487502461

ISBN 10:   148750246
Pages:   288
Publication Date:   07 March 2019
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Temporarily unavailable  
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Table of Contents

CONTRITIO CORDIS: THE LAUGHTER OF MEDE AND TEARLESSNESS OF CONTRICION DREAMS OF AVARICE: THE ABSENT PRESENCE OF THE USURY PROHIBITION RESTITUTIO: FROM RULE TO LAW TO JUSTICE IN COVETISE'S CONFESSION SATISFACTIO OPERIS: MAXIM AND METAPHOR IN WRONG'S TRIAL CONTRITIO CORDIS, CONFESSIO ORIS, ET SATISFACTIO OPERIS: FROM SYMBOL TO SIGN IN PATIENCE'S SERMON

Reviews

The book not only offers an insightful reframing of Langland's interest in the law and penitence, but also makes an original and persuasive contribution to scholarship on the text in general. What helps considerably here is Thomas' careful negotiation of the link between literariness and legality. Rather than simply taking their kinship as read, his study takes the time to think through the specific points of connection between the law and Langland's poetics. -- Ben Parsons * <em>Review of English Studies</em> * This is an ambitious and rewarding book that reveals Langland's sustained and profound commitment to reinventing canonist thought. -- Conrad van Dijk * Studies in the Age of Chaucer * This book offers a rich and provocative account of the way an allegorical poem might participate in the discourse of canon law and make its own, distinctive contributions to canonist thought. -- Alastair Bennett, Royal Holloway, University of London * <em>Journal of British Studies</em> *

The book not only offers an insightful reframing of Langland's interest in the law and penitence, but also makes an original and persuasive contribution to scholarship on the text in general. What helps considerably here is Thomas' careful negotiation of the link between literariness and legality. Rather than simply taking their kinship as read, his study takes the time to think through the specific points of connection between the law and Langland's poetics. -- Ben Parsons * <em>Review of English Studies</em> * This book offers a rich and provocative account of the way an allegorical poem might participate in the discourse of canon law and make its own, distinctive contributions to canonist thought. -- Alastair Bennett, Royal Holloway, University of London * <em>Journal of British Studies</em> * Thomas reminds us of the complexity of the poem, the way its call for radical reform and its desire for restoration can co-exist in ways that produce sudden shifts and unexpected results. Indeed, this is an ambitious and rewarding book that reveals Langland's sustained and profound commitment to reinventing canonist thought. -- Conrad van Dijk * <em>Studies in the Age of Chaucer</em> * Elegantly written and persuasively argued, this book merits persistent return for its suggestive insights and careful attention to Langland's intricate poetic experiments. -- Jamie K. Taylor, Bryn Mawr College * <em>Yearbook of Langland Studies</em> * This study is an excellent resource for readers ready to invest the time and mental energy required to understand the complex dialectics both moving ecclesiastical jurisprudence and provoking late-medieval English authors to engage with it. Moreover, because this deeply learned and detailed analysis focuses on one strand of that engagement, Thomas has set the stage for many other studies to follow. -- Candace Barrington * Canadian Journal of History, Vol. 56, No. 1 * This is a deeply learned work which draws upon underused sources like the Corpus iuris canonici and penitential manuals to read Piers Plowman. It is interdisciplinary in its method as well as its sources; Thomas thinks about how literary tropes might reformulate legal authority and about how the language of law contributes to the form of a literary work. -- Conor McKee * Reformation, Vol. 26, No. 1 * This book will be of interest to scholars of Piers Plowman and the law. The second chapter, in particular, is a noteworthy addition to the scholarship. -- Ian Cornelius * Anglia, Vol. 139, No. 1 * This is a brilliant book, as complex and multi-layered as the medieval poem it deals with. -- Robert Ombres O.P. * <em>New Blackfriars Vol. 102, No. 1099</em> * The book is a wonderfully nuanced approach to long-standing issues surrounding the contextualization of Piers Plowman, and a much-needed addition to the field. -- Gwen Ellis and Alexandra Domeshek * <i>Dies Legibiles, First Edition</i> * Few scholars could have written a book like this. Canon law is difficult enough to decipher when it is translated to English, but most of those texts Thomas was working with are in Latin. In general, Thomas's linguistic expertise is truly extraordinary. -- Sara M. Butler, Ohio State University * <em>Modern Philology</em> * In applying canonist writing to Langland's poem, Thomas offers a deeply informed survey of church law on penance, and he moves through a wide range of Latin sources with enviable agility and ease. -- Kate Crassons, Lehigh University * <em>English Studies</em> * Morton Bloomfield famously remarked that reading Piers Plowman 'is like reading a commentary on an unknown text.' In this erudite and carefully argued book, Thomas persuasively demonstrates that in many places, that text may be canon law. -- Fiona Somerset, University of Connecticut * <em>Law & Literature</em> * Piers Plowman and the Reinvention of Church Law in the Late Middle Ages establishes that there is much profit in investigating the canonists' complex debates to produce striking new readings of knotty passages in the poem. -- Wendy Scase, University of Birmingham * <em>Medieval Sermon Studies</em> * I expect that Piers Plowman and the Reinvention of Church Law in the Late Middle Ages will be the book of record on its topic for a long time to come. It is obligatory reading for those interested in penance in Piers Plowman as well as all those invested in the radically humane possibilities of late medieval European religious cultures. -- Eric Weiskott, Boston College * <em>The Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures</em> * Ultimately, this book is especially helpful for reassessing the role of canon law and the function of allegory in Piers Plowman and its wider effects for not only the narrative and characterization, but as potential models and sources of inspiration for contemporary legal practices in late medieval England. -- Curtis Runstedler, Tubingen * <em>Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch</em> * All readers will find much of interest in this erudite study. Thomas has enriched the scholarly community's understanding of so many (in some cases quite little studied) episodes in the poem. -- Chase Padusniak, Princeton University * <i>Comitatus</i> * The book is a tremendously impressive and important contribution to Piers Plowman studies: robust in scholarship, thorough in close analysis of Langland's poem, and blessed with the gift of Thomas's crystal clarity of expression. -- Jennifer Sisk * <i>Anglistik</i> * In this fascinating, beautifully crafted book, Thomas teaches us the value of 'law and literature' for 'law and religion'; in it, law, religion, and literature are fully linked in a medieval poem which is 'productive of, not just derivative from, the discourse of canon law (p. 10). -- Norman Doe, Cardiff University * <em>Journal of Religious History</em> *

Author Information

Arvind Thomas is an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of California, Los Angeles.

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